• AIDS was first reported in the United States in 1981.


• AIDS is caused by the HIV virus. The HIV virus kills and damages cells in the body's immune system. HIV destroys the body's ability to fight infection.


• AIDS/HIV affects all socioeconomic and racial groups. HIV affects seven times more African Americans and three times more Hispanics than whites.

What is HIV?

HIV Stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus

• Human - Human because the virus can only affect humans.


• Immunodeficiency - Immunodeficiency because the effect of the virus is to create a deficiency, a failure to work properly, within the body's immune system.


• Virus - Virus because this organism is a virus, which means one of its characteristics is that it is incapable of reproducing by itself. The virus reproduces by taking over the machinery of the human cell

What is AIDS?

AIDS stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome

• Acquired- Acquired means that this disease is not heredity, but develops after birth from exposure to the disease causing agent.


• Immune - Immune means that the disease is characterized by a weakening of the immune system, the part of the body that fights infection.


• Deficiency- The virus makes the immune system deficient or not work properly.


• Syndrome - Syndrome refers to a group of symptoms that collectively indicate or characterize a disease.

What Causes Aids?

• AIDS is caused by the most advanced stages of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection.


• AIDS includes all HIV-infected people who have fewer than 200 CD4+ T cells per cubic millimeter of blood. (Healthy adults usually have CD4+ T-cell counts of 1,000 or more.)


• AIDS is also defined using 26 clinical conditions that affect people with advanced HIV disease. These conditions are called opportunistic infections. Opportunistic infections generally do not affect people with normal immune systems, but they flourish in people with HIV weakened immune systems. In people with AIDS, these infections are often severe and sometimes fatal because the immune system is so ravaged by HIV that the body cannot fight off certain bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, and other microbes.

How is HIV/AIDS Transmitted?

• High Risk Behavior


• Sharing drug needles or syringes. An injection needle can pass blood directly from one person's bloodstream to another.


• Having sexual contact with someone, including oral, with someone who is infected without using a condom.


• Having sexual contact with someone whose HIV status is unknown.
  

• Infected Blood


• HIV is spread through contact with infected blood. This includes: transfusions, accidents in healthcare settings, and certain blood products. Today, because of blood screening and heat treatment, the risk of getting HIV from such transfusions is extremely small.

• Mother to Child


• Women can transmit HIV to their babies during pregnancy or birth. HIV also can be spread to babies through the breast milk of mothers infected with the virus. Mother's who are treated with certain medications can reduce the chance of transmitting HIV to their baby. If a HIV infected mother delivers her baby through cesarean section, the chances of the baby being infected can be reduced to a rate of 1 percent

• Sexually Transmitted Infections


• If you have a sexually transmitted infection (STI) such as syphilis, genital herpes, chlamydia, gonorrhea, or bacterial vaginosis appears, you may be more susceptible to getting HIV infection during sex with infected partners.

Testing / Diagnosis

• Your doctor or health care provider can test your blood for the presence of antibodies. HIV antibodies generally do not reach noticeable levels in the blood for 1 to 3 months following infection. However, it may take as long as 6 months for enough antibodies to show up in standard blood tests.


• A doctor or healthcare provider can determine if you have been recently infected (acute infection) by screening for HIV genetic material.


• Health care providers diagnose HIV infection by using two different types of antibody tests: ELISA and Western Blot.


• If you are highly likely to be infected, but have tested negative your doctor or healthcare provider may request additional tests or you may be told to retest at a later date.

Early Symptoms of HIV

• Most people do not show symptoms of HIV when they first become infected. However, some people may show flu-like symptoms within the first couple of months after being exposed to the virus. This symptoms include:


• Fever


• Headache


• Tiredness


• Rash


• Enlarged lymph nodes (glands of the immune system easily felt in the neck and groin)

• These symptoms usually disappear and are often mistaken for another viral infection. During this time people are very infectious.


• More persistent and severe symptoms may not appear for 10 years or more after HIV first enters the body in adults, or within 2 years in children born with HIV infection.

Other Symptoms Experienced Before the Onset of AIDS

• Symptoms include:


• Lack of energy


• Weight loss


• Frequent fevers and sweats


• Persistent or frequent yeast infections (vaginal or oral)


• Persistent skin rashes or flaky skin


• Pelvic inflammatory disease in women that does not respond to treatment


• Short-term memory loss

• Symptoms opportunistic infections include:


• Coughing and shortness of breath


• Seizures and lack of coordination


• Difficult or painful swallowing


• Mental symptoms such as confusion and forgetfulness


• Severe and persistent diarrhea


• Fever


• Vision loss


• Nausea, abdominal cramps, and vomiting


• Weight loss and extreme fatigue


• Severe headaches


• Coma

Treatment

• When AIDS first surfaced there were no medications to combat the underlying immune deficiency. Researchers, however, have developed several classes of drugs to fight the HIV infection.


• Nucleoside reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitors- These drugs slow the spread of HIV in the body and delay the start of opportunistic infections.


• Protease inhibitors- interrupt the virus from making copies of itself at a later step in its life cycle.


• Fusion inhibitors- inhibition blocks HIV's ability to enter and infect the human immune cells.

Prevention

• There is no vaccine for HIV. The only way to prevent against this disease is to abstain from behaviors that put you at risk such as unprotected sex or sharing needles.