HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is retrovirus as well as an STD (sexually transmitted disease) that infects the immune system and leads to AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome). 33.3 million people were recorded living with HIV in 2009, and another 1.8 million people died of AIDS in the very same year. While about a third of HIV/AIDS cases originate in Africa, it is a serious problem in the world, and is considered a worldwide pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO).
HIV is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system and can lead in many cases to AIDS. Once an HIV patient’s immune system is incapable of fighting infections, the patient has AIDS. As soon as a person has contracted AIDS it opens up the opportunity for “opportunistic infections” to infect the body and an infection as harmless as the common cold can end up killing a person. There are two types of HIV: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV 1 and 2 are very similar, except the immune system depletion seems to progress more slowly in cases of HIV-2 than in cases of HIV-1, and HIV-2 seems to be connected to solely Africa. HIV-1 is much more common globally than HIV-2, and generally when the virus is talked about as HIV, it is referring to the HIV-1 virus.
Symptoms:
A person can live with HIV seeming totally normal and healthy for years before symptoms of infection show. Symptoms of HIV include fever, rash, muscle aches, and swollen lymph nodes, all symptoms consistent with the flu. The only way to know for sure if you have HIV is to get tested because, as mentioned previously, a person can live for as many as eight to ten years without showing any signs of HIV infection, so it’s best to get tested if you have any suspicion.
How is HIV contracted?
HIV is an STD that is passed through bodily fluids such as blood, sperm, vaginal fluids, etc. HIV cannot be passed through bodily fluids such as sweat, tears, or saliva. While HIV is most commonly contracted through sexual activity, it can be contracted in a number of other ways too. HIV can be contracted through using unsanitary needles for injection, sex, breast-feeding, and childbirth. There are other ways HIV can be contracted, but those are the four most common. The best way to prevent HIV is to practice safe sex, limit your sexual partners, and to use sanitary needles. HIV contracted through childbirth and through breastfeeding is harder to prevent, but there are medications a mother who is HIV positive can take before childbirth to decrease the chances that the baby will contract the HIV virus.
Treatments:
There is currently no cure for the HIV virus. Medicine can be taken in various regimens to slow and in some cases stop the progress of the HIV virus, but there is no cure to date. Treatments can hold AIDS at bay for many HIV patients, in addition to slowing and stopping the spreading of the HIV virus and the depletion of their immune system. For millions of HIV patients in third world countries treatment is not available, so their HIV most often leads to AIDS, resulting in death. There are treatments available for AIDS patients that can allow the patient to live for up to five times longer than they would without treatment, but death is hard to avoid for AIDS patients because their immune system is incapable of fighting any contracted infections.
HIV/AIDS on a Molecular Level:
HIV is a retrovirus, meaning that it has RNA that codes for the synthesis of DNA. The HIV virus injects its genetic information into CD4 cells (also known as T4 cells) which are needed to fight infections. The CD4 cells are a big makeup of the immune system, and without CD4 cells, your immune system is rendered ineffective. HIV is actually a very smart virus for attacking the immune system because the immune system is the thing that is supposed to be attacking the virus, not the other way around.
HIV can infect the body as both a lysogenic or lytic infection. HIV can remain dormant in the body for years without any signs of an infection. In this case, HIV is most likely in a lysogenic infection cycle in which a new HIV virus is synthesized each time the host cell it has infected divides. However, once HIV virus converts into a lytic infection, it can replicate rapidly and be extremely dangerous. The HIV virus injects its genetic information into CD4 cells, then the DNA in the CD4 cells act as a manufacturing factory for more HIV viruses. The genetic material from the HIV virus holds the blueprint for the making of more HIV viruses, and as soon as this genetic material is injected into the DNA of CD4 cells, the DNA reads the blueprint and synthesizes more HIV viruses inside the cell. The host cell’s DNA keeps manufacturing new HIV viruses until the cell swells and lyses. After the cell lyses the viruses are released free to travel throughout the body and find more CD4 cells to use as host cells.
Without being diagnosed and treated, the HIV viruses can continue in this cycle until it has infected all the CD4 cells, and therefore compromised the body’s immune system. Without being able to fight infections, a seemingly harmless infection such as the common cold can be deadly to an HIV positive patient. At this point of HIV infection, the patient has contracted AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome). As soon as a person’s immune system can no longer fight infections, they are said to have AIDS. AIDS is not a specific virus, but rather an umbrella term for a compromised immune system due to HIV. Any infection an AIDS patient contracts can kill them, and if an AIDS patient doesn’t receive treatment, they typically die within a year of being diagnosed with AIDS.
Child-to-Mother Transmission:
The four major types of transmission of HIV are using unsanitary needles for injection, sex, childbirth, and breast-feeding. All of the HIV transmission through breast-feeding cases are documented as mother-to-child transmission. However, there was an interesting epidemic of HIV in a hospital in Libya having to deal with child-to-mother HIV transmission. The mothers were HIV negative prior to childbirth, and all of the fathers were HIV negative too. The question of how the mothers contracted the HIV virus after childbirth is one that had scientists perplexed for a while after this epidemic had broken out. The mothers all tested positive for HIV after childbirth, and all the children tested positive too. But if the mothers hadn’t given the HIV to the children, then was it possible that the children had given HIV to the mothers?
After many tests and months of research, scientists deduced that child-to-mother HIV transmission was a plausible explanation for the epidemic. The scientists concluded that the babies had contracted the HIV virus from the hospital environment (either through being tested with unsanitary needles or a various number of other explanations), and that during breast-feeding, they had transmitted it to their mothers. It was deduced that the children’s gums must have been bleeding when they were breast-feeding, and that the blood had seeped into the mother’s body via the nipple. This HIV infected blood from the children’s gums that had seeped in through the mother’s nipple was then able to get into their bloodstreams and spread, eventually infecting their CD4 cells and compromising their immune systems. It is a complicated and improbable explanation, but that is how an HIV epidemic broke out in a hospital in Libya through child-to-mother breast-feeding transmission. Future for HIV/AIDS:
HIV is a highly investigated and explored topic in the medical world. Scientist all over the world are rapidly trying to crack the case of the cure for HIV/AIDS. The fact that there is no known cure for HIV is propelling the study of the virus faster and further than many other viruses for which there are already known cures. Scientist have come a long way with treatments already, however because HIV/AIDS is a retrovirus, it can mutate and progress rapidly, making it that much harder for scientist to find a cure. The future for HIV/AIDS is somewhat bright because it is such a widely funded and studied topic, and I believe that as our technology continues to progress and evolve we will eventually catch up to this virus killing millions each year.
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