See more
"The CDC never said he was patient zero and he was the first person," Curran said of Dugas.
»In addition to the potential damage to their reputation, it was also damage to scientific plausibility. It's not very likely that there was a single source that started the epidemic in the United States. It's more likely that multiple people were infected,» Curran said. «I think the concept of patient zero has always been flawed and flawed, and scientists never said that.»
Dugas died in 1984 from complications related to AIDS. Now, more mexico email list than 30 years later, scientists have used samples of his blood to clear his name.
Going back in time with blood
For the new research, Worobey and his colleagues gathered archival blood samples in New York and San Francisco that were originally collected for a hepatitis B study in 1978 and 1979. The samples came from men who had sex with men.
video of the article
The researchers examined the samples and noticed that “the prevalence of HIV positivity in these early samples from hepatitis B patients is actually quite high,” Worobey said Tuesday.
From the samples, the researchers recovered eight HIV genome sequences, representing the oldest genomes of the virus in North America. They also recovered the HIV genome from Dugas' blood sample.
