Annali di igiene : medicina preventiva e di comunità
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While AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) certainly represents a worldwide health problem, the attention of many researchers and epidemiologists, besides the WHO itself, has recently focused on Africa for the following reasons: 1) The etiologic agent of AIDS, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) (previously named HTLV-III or LAV) is likely to have originated in Africa. Solid evidence has been accumulated that antibodies against HIV were present in African sera collected in the early 1960s. In the same period widespread infection by viruses strictly related to HIV has been documented in primates living in tropical Africa. ⋯ Insects and tribal rituals have been also suspected as vehicles of infection in Africa; widespread prostitution and inadequate health facilities certainly are. As a consequence, transplacental infection appear much more common than in the West. 4) Clinical aspects of AIDS progression in Africa appear linked to the different spectrum of opportunistic agents present on the continent and to the general hygienic and social conditions prevailing among its people. Rather than generalized lymphoadenopathies and Pneumocystes Carini pneumonia, diarrhoea and extreme weight loss ("Slim disease") represent the most common clinical pattern.