HIV infection: facts and hypotheses.

The etiological agent of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was first isolated in 1983 and called lymphadenopathy associated virus (LAV). Other isolates of similar viruses have been named HTLV-III or ARV. Numerous studies of their biological and molecular characteristics have confirmed that they are all different isolates of the same virus for which the name human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has recently been proposed by an international committee. The current understanding of HIV's biological properties, supported by epidemiological and clinical observations, enables David Klatzmann and John Gluckman to propose a general model for its pathogenicity: a complex pathway of interaction between host and virus properties controls the stepwise evolution from primary infection to disease.