HIV-AIDS
The two Lentivirus species that infect humans are the human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV). Lentiviruses are a subclass of retroviruses. They eventually lead to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a disorder in which the immune system gradually fails, allowing malignancies and life-threatening opportunistic infections to proliferate.
Depending on the HIV subtype, the average period without treatment following HIV infection is predicted to be 9 to 11 years.
HIV is often a sexually transmitted illness that spreads by contact or transfer of blood, pre-ejaculate, semen, and vaginal secretions.
An infected woman can pass her infection to her unborn child non-sexually through breast milk, her blood, or her vaginal discharge while she is pregnant. HIV may be found in these physiological fluids as both free virus particles and as a virus within infected immune cells.
Research has revealed that if the HIV-positive partner continuously maintains an undetectable viral load, HIV cannot be transmitted through condom-free sexual contact between same-sex or opposite-sex partners.
Important immune system components include helper T cells (particularly CD4+ T cells), macrophages, and dendritic cells are all infected by HIV. Several processes, including pyroptosis of abortively infected T cells, apoptosis of uninfected bystander cells, direct viral destruction of infected cells, and killing of infected CD4+ T cells by CD8+ cytotoxic lymphocytes that detect HIV, contribute to HIV infection resulting in low numbers of CD4+ T cells.
unclean cells. AIDS develops when the body loses cell-mediated immunity when CD4+ T cell counts fall below a key threshold, making it increasingly vulnerable to opportunistic infections.
HIV History
The LGBT Daily New York Native published the first news item on "an exotic new disease" on May 18, 1981.
In the US, AIDS was first clinically noted in 1981. Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP or PJP, the latter term recognizing that the causative agent is now called Pneumocystis jirovecii), a rare opportunistic infection that was known to occur in people with extremely compromised immune systems, first appeared in a cluster of injection drug users and gay men without any known cause of impaired immunity.
Soon after, scientists at the NYU School of Medicine investigated homosexual men who were acquiring Kaposi's sarcoma (KS), a previously uncommon skin disease. A CDC task group was established to monitor the outbreak when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were made aware of several additional instances of PJP and KS. The first case of AIDS that has been retroactively documented is thought to have occurred in Norway starting in 1966.
The CDC did not initially have an official name for the illness; instead, it frequently referred to it by the names of other illnesses that were related to it, such as lymphadenopathy, after which the HIV virus was first called by its discoverers. They also utilized the name under which a task force had been established in 1981: Kaposi's Sarcoma and Opportunistic Infections. The term "gay-related immune deficiency," or "GRID," had been coined in the general press.
The CDC named it "the 4H disease" after searching for a term and examining the affected populations since it appeared to target homosexuals, heroin addicts, hemophiliacs, and Haitians. However as it was discovered that AIDS did not just affect the gay community, it became clear that the name GRID was inaccurate, and AIDS was officially presented during a conference in July 1982. The CDC began referring to the disease as AIDS in September 1982.
In the same issue of the journal Science in 1983, two different research teams led by French researchers Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier and American Robert Gallo separately reported that a new retrovirus may have been infecting AIDS patients.
Gallo said that a virus his team had discovered in an AIDS patient resembled other human T-lymphotropic viruses (HTLVs) that his team had discovered before. Gallo said in 1987 that the virus he had claimed to have found in 1984 was actually one that France had supplied to him the year prior. The virus that Gallo's team recently identified was known as HTLV-III.
A patient who presented with physical weakness and swollen lymph nodes in the neck, two hallmark signs of initial HIV infection, was the subject of viral isolation by Montagnier's team. By demonstrating that the core proteins of this virus were immunologically distinct from those of HTLV-I, Montagnier and his team disproved Gallo's group's findings. Montagnier's team called their isolated virus lymphadenopathy-associated virus (LAV). Since it was discovered that these two viruses were identical, LAV and HTLV-III were called HIV in 1986.
At the University of California, San Francisco, Jay A. Levy's group was another one that collaborated with the Montagnier and Gallo groups simultaneously. The AIDS-associated retrovirus (ARV) was the moniker he gave to the AIDS virus when he independently found it in 1983. The virus described by the Montagnier and Gallo groups was somewhat unlike this one. The ARV strains revealed the variability of HIV isolates for the first time, and some of these isolates continue to be well-known instances of the AIDS virus present in the United States.
AIDS Origins
Both HIV-1 and HIV-2 are thought to have started in non-human primates in West-Central Africa before being zoonotically transmitted to people in the early 20th century.
SIVcpz, a simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) that affects wild chimpanzees, is thought to have evolved in southern Cameroon. HIV-1 is descended from SIVcpz, which is endemic in the chimpanzee subspecies Pan troglodytes troglodytes.
SIVsmm, a virus of the sooty mangabey (Cercocebus atys atys), an Old World monkey that lives in coastal West Africa (from southern Senegal to western Côte d'Ivoire), is the virus that is most closely related to HIV-2. Due to a genetic fusion of two viral resistance genes, New World monkeys like the owl monkey are immune to HIV-1 infection.
The three groups of the virus, M, N, and O, are likely to have developed as a result of at least three independent instances of HIV-1 crossing the species barrier.
There is proof that people who engage in bushmeat activities, such as hunting or selling bushmeat, frequently get SIV. SIV is a weak virus, though, and the human immune system normally suppresses it within weeks after infection.
It is believed that a number of swiftly succeeding transmissions of the virus from one person to another are required for it to have enough time to evolve into HIV. Furthermore, because of its very low person-to-person transmission rate, it can only infect the population when one or more high-risk transmission pathways are present, none of which are considered to have existed in Africa before the 20th century.
According to certain suggested high-risk transmission paths, the virus can adapt to people and spread throughout society via
The projected date of the animal-to-human crossover will determine which high-risk transmission routes the virus will use to adapt to people and spread throughout civilization.
According to genetic analysis of the virus, the HIV-1 M group's most recent common ancestor existed about 1910. According to proponents of this theory, the spread of prostitution, different patterns of sexual contact (especially multiple, concurrent partnerships), and the high frequency of genital ulcer diseases (like syphilis) in developing colonial cities all contributed to the social changes that led to the HIV epidemic.
While HIV transmission rates during vaginal sex are normally modest, they are significantly raised if one of the participants has an STD that causes genital ulcers. Colonial cities in the early 1900s were characterized by a high prevalence of genital ulcers and prostitution. For example, as of 1928, it was estimated that up to 45% of female residents of eastern Leopoldville (currently Kinshasa) were prostitutes, and as of 1933, 15% of all residents of the same city had contracted one of the syphilis strains.
The earliest known human case of HIV was discovered in 1959 in the Belgian Congo. A sixteen-year-old boy called Robert Rayford who developed symptoms in 1966 and passed away in 1969 suggests that the virus may have been prevalent in the United States as early as the mid- to late 1960s.
The extensive use of risky medical procedures in Africa in the years after World War II, such as the reuse of single-use syringes without sterilization during mass vaccination, antibiotic, and anti-malaria treatment programs, is an alternate and probable complementary theory.
SIV has produced transmissible HIV lineages throughout the twentieth century, according to research on the time of the most recent common ancestor for HIV-1 groups M and O as well as for HIV-2 groups A and B. The scattered timing of these HIV transmissions to humans suggests that more than one external cause is not required to account for the HIV transmission between species.
This discovery is in line with the two main theories about how the HIV epidemics started, which are the spread of SIV to people through the slaughtering or killing of infected monkeys and the colonial development of sub-Saharan African towns.
Hiv symptoms and signs.
In the initial few months following infection, the disease spreads more readily, although many people are not aware of their condition until it has advanced. One or two weeks after contracting the infection, a person may not exhibit any symptoms. A flu-like sickness might also affect others, including:
fever, rash, and sore throat.
The immune system gradually becomes more vulnerable to infection. Other symptoms and indicators related to this include:
lymph node swelling, fever, diarrhea, and cough.
Without medical care, those with HIV can also acquire serious illnesses:
Hiv Treatment
The HIV infection is incurable. Antiretroviral medications are used to treat it because they prevent the virus from reproducing in the body.
Although antiretroviral treatment (ART) now available does not cure HIV infection, it does help a person's immune system develop. They can fend against additional illnesses thanks to this.
ART must currently be taken daily for the remainder of a person's life.
The quantity of the virus decreases as a result of ART. This puts an end to symptoms and lets individuals lead full, healthy lives. People with HIV who are on antiretroviral therapy (ART) and do not have HIV in their blood will not transmit the virus to their sexual partners.
Women with HIV who are pregnant should get access to and start taking ART as soon as feasible. This safeguards the mother's health and will lessen the chance of HIV getting into the fetus during pregnancy or into the newborn through breast milk.
Antiretroviral medications used for those without HIV can stop the infection.
Pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is when it is administered before a potential HIV encounter, and post-exposure prophylaxis, or PEP, is when it is administered after an exposure. When there is a high risk of developing HIV, patients can utilize PrEP or PEP; however, they should see a professional before doing so.
The HIV response continues to struggle with advanced HIV illness. To lower sickness and mortality, WHO is assisting nations in implementing the advanced HIV disease package of care. Future developments in HIV medications, including injectable formulations, and short-course therapies for opportunistic infections such as cryptococcal meningitis, may alter how individuals take ART and preventive drugs.
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