40 years ago, French researchers discovered the AIDS virus

From left to right, researchers Luc Montagnier, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Jean-Claude Chermann. Here, in April 1984 at the Institut Pasteur. AFP - MICHEL CLEMENT

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Their discovery was published in the journal Science on May 20, 1983. This was one of the first steps in the fight against a deadly epidemic, which has so far claimed more than 40 million lives.

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The story begins in June 1981. An American medical journal reports five troubling cases: young men have rare pneumonia, with greatly weakened immune defenses; Two of them died. Doctors wonder: why these "opportunistic" infections usually reserved for very weakened people, in young people who have been perfectly healthy until now? American experts speak of an "epidemic among gay men and drug users". The disease does not yet have a name and is spreading.

Thousands of miles away, in Paris, a young doctor, Willy Rozenbaum, reads this brief report. A few hours later, he receives a young man with the same signs in the hospital, and makes the connection. As the months go by, more cases of this mysterious evil arise, and the hypothesis of a new virus emerges.

A discovery made in 1983

Willy Rozenbaum then came into contact with researchers at the Institut Pasteur, Luc Montagnier, Jean-Claude Chermann and Françoise Barré-Sinoussi, among others, who were working on so-called retroviruses. To test the hypothesis, a lymph node is taken from a patient of Willy Rozenbaum, and ganglion cells are cultured.

A month later, on February 3, 1983, at 17:45 p.m., echoed in a laboratory at the Institut Pasteur: "Eureka, that's it, I see it, I have it." Under his electron microscope, Charles Dauguet, a member of the team, has just seen the virus, which will be called some time later "human immunodeficiency virus", HIV. Professors Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2008 for this discovery.

► Read also: 40 years after the discovery of the virus, two generations take turns in the fight against AIDS

"Aging with HIV, we didn't even imagine it"

Forty years after this discovery, it is now possible to live with HIV in a more serene way, says Gérard Pele Dedieu, of the association Les petits bonheurs. At the time, he says, "a lot of people had given up on their aging, selling the goods they had, saying they had no hope.

« It must be remembered that in that period, it was inevitable. Growing old with HIV, we didn't even imagine it. Now we can live. That's what's most important: having fun, having fun, having many small pleasures in your life and great happiness. For all those who have experienced this period of the 80s and 90s, who have really been dramas in their lives, being able to age with their virus is still a great comfort. »

(

And with AFP)

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• France
• Health and medicine
• AIDS