A country in Africa has been discovered by scientists as the origin of HIV/AIDS. While the genesis of the disease has come from abroad, some people -- living in the U.S. -- who have the disease are living longer.

A study that was released at the beginning of this month shows that HIV originated in Kinshasa, what is now called the Democratic Republic of Congo, from the 1920s. This is neither good news nor bad news: This is just scientific proof of HIV's origin. On the other hand, the good news for people living with HIV/AIDS in Palm Springs, they are living longer with the disease.

The HIV-1 virus, a chimpanzee virus, is how HIV spread from Kinshasa to the rest of the world. The study was led by Oliver Pybus of Oxford University and Philippe Lemey of the University of Leuven in Belgium. Pybus and Lemey investigated and found that most cases were caused by the HIV-1 virus. But the HIV-1 virus comes in several varieties, and those groups are rare, The Economist reported.

The rare grouping that Pybus and Lemey uncovered was the result of the pandemic. It is known as group M.

The HIV-1 virus evolved rather quickly. With the rapid pace of the virus' evolution, the scientists were able to come up with two useful consequences. One was a family tree that showed the rate of genetic change at a reasonably constant state when the various branches diverged, The Economist reported.

The second point was that the virus genotype had varied from location to location depending on where it first came from. This allowed Pybus and Lemey to track its origin in more detail.

Group M, which carries the HIV-1 virus, came from as far back as the 1920s. Back then Kinshasa was called the Léopoldville, what was the Belgian Congo, and now called the Democratic Republic of Congo, The Economist reported.  

There is now proof that the virus did indeed jump from primates to humans. The virus would have been transmitted through the blood. The other reason for its spread through that part of Africa was because of a migrating population, the expansion of the Belgian railways in that part of Africa, and the trading of goods and services. Some of those goods were primates.

Besides the railways and the trading of good and services in the 1920s, the introduction of sex workers was also the means by which the virus spread. The behaviour of the sex workers, according to the researchers, had resulted in the global pandemic, The Advocate reported. By the end of the 1940s, more than one million people traveled through Kinshasa every year by way of railways.

According to the UNAIDS, more than 75 million people have been infected with HIV. One and a half million people died of AIDS last year, The Advocate reported.

By the 1960s the group M virus was invisible but still growing. Pybus and Lemey uncovered that the virus appeared to grow first in Africa, and then it exploded in the rest of the world, The Economist reported. With the introduction of the Haitian professionals who came to the Congolese people after the independence, those professionals took it back to their homes and then to the U.S. By 1981 the doctors in the U.S. started to realize the existence of HIV.

By the 1990s with the introduction of anti-retroviral therapies against HIV, the spread of the disease started to slow down. Now, an area in the U.S. -- Palm Springs, a Coachella Valley desert city that is 100 miles east of Los Angeles -- has now seen an uptick of HIV positive residents living with the disease in their 60s and 70s, Newsweek reported.

In Palm Springs, the average age of HIV positive residents are in their 50s. In the rest of the U.S., the average age of HIV positive people are in their 40s.

Aging HIV positive people have some higher health risks. The older an HIV positive person gets they are at a higher risk for developing cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and neurological problems such as dementia, Newsweek reported.

To add, more than half of the 1.1 million HIV patients in the U.S. have neurocognitive disorders that might affect concentration, memory, decision making, coordination, and motor skills, as well as language and sensory perception. These health problems are putting a strain on the U.S. public health care system, Newsweek reported.

The Center for Disease Control in America says that by next year more than half of all the people living with HIV will be over 50.

People living with the disease have found hope. The National Institute of Health's (NIH) Office of AIDS Research is asking that more funding be dedicated to the study of HIV and the aging process but with a particular focus on Palm Springs, Newsweek reported.

David J. Moore, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of California, part of San Diego's HIV Neurobehavioral Research Program, is backing the idea, along with the NIH's provided funding. The study is led by Moore, and it has already looked at Palm Springs since last year. They investigated the health, cognition and biology of aging HIV patients, especially those that are 65 years or older, Newsweek reported.

"By looking at the Palm Springs group, we can see what is coming for rest of the country," Moore said.