The Medicine & Biotechnology PMP History

The AIDS and Infectious Diseases PMP was established in 1990 in response to the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic, identified in the early 1980s following the 1981 report of a unique outbreak of the rare Kaposi sarcoma among  Caucasian American homosexuals in San Francisco and New York.

Kaposi Sarcoma was previously known to occur endemically in parts of Africa or sporadically in Ashkenazi Jews in central Europe. Virology studies were soon conducted in several laboratories to identify the pathogen (designated Human Immunodeficiency Virus) and develop appropriate molecular diagnostic tools for the rapid identification of HIV- positive individuals, particularly for blood screening. Blood testing was (and is) extremely necessary to prevent virus transmission during blood transfusions in patients requiring immediate transfusions for bleeding episodes (including surgery) and  patients requiring blood for chronic bone marrow disorders (e.g., congenital hematological disorders such as thalassemia and hemophilia) or toxic bone marrow damage resulting from medical treatments (including antineoplastic cancer treatment). 

HIV is a fragile virus, easily inactivated outside the body, making environmental transmission highly unlikely. The virus, in fact, is transmitted almost exclusively directly through infected body fluids, particularly blood and semen. At the same time, the source of the pathogen was identified: Central Africa, where the simian virus (SIV), as a zoonotic infection, was transmitted from pauci or asymptomatic chimapzees (immunodeficiency was present only in macaques and other nonhuman primates) to humans. 

During those years, the PMP for AIDS and Infectious Diseases played a key role, organizing several workshops in Erice and founding the East Africa AIDS Research Center, supported by the World Laboratory. Worthy of note was the 1999 Erice Conference, where the world's leading scientists gathered to call for substantial global involvement in the fight against the unique human retrovirus, sought for over 70 years following the avian sarcoma retroviruses identified  in 1911 by Nobel Prize laureate Peyton Rous. 

AIDS-related immunodeficiency was associated with several pathologies, in addition to tumors and cachexia (African slim disease) related to opportunistic pathogens. A peculiar disease was the AIDS-related dementia.