1981

• June 5, CDC reports a cluster of Pneumocystis pneumonia in five gay male drug users in Los Angeles
• July 4, CDC reports clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and Pneumocycstis pneumonia among gay men in New York City and California ^{source of this quote}
• July 9, CDC reports a cluster of opportunistic infections and Kaposi's sarcoma among Haitians recently entering the United States. ^TIME
• September 24, Current Trends Update on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) - United States

CDC defines a case of AIDS as a disease, at least moderately predictive of a defect in cell-mediated immunity, occurring in a person with no known cause for diminished resistance to that disease. Such diseases include KS, PCP, and serious OOI.((S)) Diagnoses are considered to fit the case definition only if based on sufficiently reliable methods (generally histology or culture). Some patients who are considered AIDS cases on the basis of diseases only moderately predictive of cellular immunodeficiency may not actually be immunodeficient and may not be part of the current epidemic.

1983

• March, FDA issues donor screening guidelines. AIDS high-risk groups should not donate.

1984

• April 23, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler announced at a press conference that an American scientist, Dr. Robert Gallo, had discovered the probable cause of AIDS: the retrovirus subsequently named human immunodeficiency virus or HIV in 1986.

1985

• March 2, FDA approves first AIDS antibody screening tests.
• October, a conference of public health officials including representatives of the Centers for Disease Control and World Health Organisation met in Bangui and defined AIDS in Africa as, "prolonged fevers for a month or more, weight loss of over 10% and prolonged diarrhoea".

1986

• HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) adopted as name of the retrovirus that was first proposed as the cause of AIDS by Luc Montagnier of France, who named it LAV (lymphadenopathy associated virus) and Robert Gallo of the United States, who named it HTLV-III (human T-lymphotropic virus type III)
• January 14, "By 1996, three to five million Americans will be HIV positive and one million will be dead of AIDS" - NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, New York Times

1987

• "By 1990 one in five heterosexuals will be dead of AIDS" - Oprah Winfrey.

1993

• CDC expands definition of AIDS to include a person with HIV infection and a CD4 cell count below 200.^{Robert Gallo's discovery that a natural compound known as chemokines can block HIV and halt the progression of AIDS was hailed by Science magazine as one of that year's most important scientific breakthroughs.}

1997

• September 2, "The most recent estimate of the number of Americans infected (with HIV), 750,000, is only half the total that government officials used to cite over a decade ago, at a time when experts believed that as many as 1.5 million people carried the virus." article in the Washington Post
• "There is no recognized standard for establishing the presence or absence of HIV-1 antibody in human blood." (Abbott Labs test kit instructions)
• Based on the Bangui definition the WHO's cumulative number of AIDS cases from 1980 through 1997 for all of Africa was 620,000. ^{view PDF}

1. ⇧ Centers for Disease Control. Kaposi's Sarcoma and Pneumocycstis Pneumonia Among Homosexual Men - New York City and California. MMWR 1981 30: 305-8. view PDF
2. ⇧ Marmor M, Friedman-Kien AE, Laubenstein L., et al. Risk factors for Kaposi's sarcoma in homosexual men. Lancet 1982;1:1083-7.
3. ⇧ Centers for Disease Control. Opportunistic Infections and Kaposi's Sarcoma among Haitians in the United States. MMWR 1982 31:353-4,360-1. [view HTML] see also list of all MMWRs on HIV/AIDS and Kaposi's sarcoma
4. ⇧ 1993 Revised Classification System for HIV Infection and Expanded Surveillance Case Definition for AIDS Among Adolescents and Adults Centers for Disease Control. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Recommendations and Reports, December 18, 1992. See also Statistical analysis of 1993 expanded definiton
5. ⇧ source Table 79 on page 146 of The Impact of HIV/AIDS on the Health Sector: National Survey of Health Personnel, Ambulatory and Hospitalised Patients and Health Facilities 2002.
6. ⇧
7. ⇧ Clinical efficacy of early initiation of HAART in patients with asymptomatic HIV infection and CD4 cell count > 350 x 10(6) /l. Opravil M, Ledergerber B, Furrer H, Hirschel B, Imhof A, Gallant S, Wagels T, Bernasconi E, Meienberg F, Rickenbach M, Weber R; Swiss HIV Cohort Study. AIDS. 2002 Jul 5;16(10):1371-81. see related news report
8. ⇧ Guidelines for using antiretroviral agents among HIV-infected adults and adolescents. Dybul M, Fauci AS, Bartlett JG, Kaplan JE, Pau AK; Panel on Clinical Practices for Treatment of HIV. Ann Intern Med. 2002 Sep 3;137(5 Pt 2):381-433
9. ⇧ Guidelines for antiretroviral therapy from the WHO and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Guidlines
10. ⇧ Scientists Discover Key Genetic Factor in Determining HIV/AIDS Risk

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