HIV/AIDS Pandemia — a Problem Requiring Rethinking On the 30th Anniversary of the Discovery of Human Immunodeficiency Virus

Abstract

Hazard of HIV/AIDS pandemia is greatly underestimated due to lack of understanding of its role in the processes that are not related to medicine. The principal difference between HIV/AIDS pandemia and the pandemic processes, against which the advances were made in the ХХ century, lies in the fact that it is caused by a virus of the retrovirus family. Retroviruses are ancient tools of evolution. They cause epidemia (epizooty), which are the main mechanism of discontinuous evolution of species. This mechanism is implemented by endogenization of retroviruses in the genome of the surviving species and amplification of their genome through the formation of new copies of retroelements; complexity of the genome by the formation of new exons from introns and/or increased number of genes that are alternatively spliced. Evolutionary past of the immune system of multicellular organisms suggests securing her in the process of natural selection as the reservoir with respect to retroviruses. Thanks to the cells of the immune system there is the multiplication and accumulation of exogenous retroviruses to a certain critical mass, which allows some of them to endogenize in the germline of some specimens of infected species and further transmitted vertically, changing its evolutionary trajectory. HIV/AIDS pandemia among the species homo sapiens — a common manifestation of this process in the evolution of primate taxon. Infectious and epidemic processes caused by HIV, are multicomponent non-cyclic processes that have no mechanisms for termination. To fight with them, experience gained in the XX century during smallpox eradication or in when controlling outbreaks of influenza, plague and other cyclical infections is inapplicable. Given in the article data indicate the need to develop self-control strategy to fight against non-cyclic multicomponent epidemic processes.

Keywords

• HIV/AIDS pandemia
• HIV vaccine
• retrovirus
• endogenization
• retroviral evolution
• transposons
• retroelements