Origins of a killer virus

HIV appears to be older than scientists previously thought. The deadly virus has been plaguing humankind for a century claims a recent article in Nature magazine.

Researchers came to the conclusion after they found an HIV genome in a biopsy taken from an African woman 50 years ago.

The scientists say that by studying the origin and evolution of HIV, they’ll be able find out more about how the virus made the leap from chimpanzees to humans and create an effective cure for it.

AIDS was first discovered in 1980s. It was thought then that the virus originated in Africa somewhere between 1915 and 1941. But the new results show that HIV originates from 1908 - exactly 100 years ago.

In 2007 there were 33.2 million registered as infected with HIV, and 2.1 million deaths. them died. A third of the infected were in Africa. The gloomy forecasts suggest that in recent years HIV is set to infect 90 million people on the continent.

In North America there were 1.2 million infected with the disease, while 23,000 people died.