Discovery of AIDS

Before it even had a name, AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) appeared in the early 1980s as a group of almost unfamiliar symptoms with an unknown cause among gay men in coastal American cities. The syndrome came to be found elsewhere and was eventually discovered to arise from infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

First Cases

• The first cases of AIDS were found in 1981 in cities in California and in New York City. All of the first reported cases of the then unnamed syndrome (group of conditions) were found in men who had sex with men.

Features

• Because HIV infection causes serious symptoms only when the immune system is severely damaged and because there was, as yet, no available treatment, the first AIDS patients died rapidly.

Another Name

• Before it had its present name, the syndrome that came to be known as AIDS was identified as GRID (gay-related immune deficiency) or colloquially as "gay cancer" because of the lesions caused by Kaposi's sarcoma, a skin cancer found primarily in men with AIDS.

Further Cases

• GRID came to be known as AIDS in 1982. A change in the name became necessary as the syndrome was found outside gay communities, among both Haitian immigrants to the United States and hemophiliacs. More cases were found by 1983 among women who did not use drugs and in children, and an infectious agent came to be seen as the cause of the syndrome.

HIV

• HIV was not identified as the cause of AIDS until 1984. With the discovery of the cause of AIDS, researchers begin working on treatments, the first of which, AZT, became available in 1987.