Luc Montaigner

When AIDS was first recognized as a disease entity in the early 1980s strenuous efforts were made in many laboratories to identify the causative agent. This proved difficult. Nevertheless, Luc Montaigner working in Paris was able to isolate a retrovirus, not from a patient with clinical AIDS but from a non immunodeficient homosexual with lymphadenopathy. the virus was called lymphadenopathy associated virus (LAV). Other isolates of this virus were made, for example, by Robert Gallo in the United States. After a period of confusion over its name, the virus was eventually renamed Human immunodefciency virus (HIV)