A team of international scientists led by the Oxford University and the University of Leuven from Belgium suggests the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV originated in the 1920s in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa.

HIV was first observed in the U.S in 1981 and is known to have transferred from primates to humans, infecting almost 75 million to date.

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Scientists recreated the genetic history of the HIV-1 group M that spread from Africa to the rest of the world.

Professor Philippe Lemey, one of the researchers from the University of Leuven, said the study required development of a statistical structure to reconstruct the spread of viruses through space and time from their genome sequences.

Once the origin of the virus is clear, the scientists used other historical information to compare the results. Predictable patterns prove the virus began spreading from the Kinshasa region to other populated areas.

"For the first time we have analyzed all the available evidence using the latest phylogeographic techniques, which enable us to statistically estimate where a virus comes from." said Oliver Pybus, a professor from the Department of Zoology at Oxford University.

"This means we can say with a high degree of certainty where and when the HIV pandemic originated."

During the Belgian colonial era, a link between Kinshasa and other areas through railway transportation contributed to the rise of the HIV virus, along with other factors such as social changes and urbanization, said researchers.

TagsHIV, Oxford University, University of Leuven, Democratic Republic of Congo, Virus