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- What is AIDS?
- Symptoms of AIDS
- Causes of AIDS
- Prevention of AIDS
- Risk factors for AIDS
- Complications of AIDS
- When to see a doctor about AIDS
- Diagnosis of AIDS
- Conventional treatment of AIDS
- Alternative/complementary treatment of AIDS
- Living with AIDS
- Caring for someone with AIDS
AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is caused by by a virus. The virus is named HIV - human immunodeficiency virus.
People who get infected with HIV will eventually get AIDS, although there are a few people infected with HIV that have not progressed to AIDS yet (despite these people not even taking any type of medication), who are being studied by scientists to work out how their immune system works.
When the immune system becomes seriously damaged, then HIV infection has become AIDS. The way the immune system is damaged is when the HIV virus multiplies in the body and the white blood cells (CD4+ or helper T cells) responsible for stimulating the activity of other cells, become depleted. With less of these helper T cells in the blood, the body becomes even more vulnerable to the virus allowing it to replicate and take over.
In addition to this, less immunity means that other bacterial, viral and fungal infections can take this as the perfect opportunity to invade the body and cause a serious infection, which, if the person was otherwise healthy, would not have any serious impacts.
AIDS happens basically when the body's immunity is badly compromised due to the initial infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that allows other, opportunistic infection to seriously debilitate the body, often with fatal results.
The Centre for Disease Control has a definition of AIDS - all HIV-infected people who have less than 200 CD4+ T cells per cubic millimeter of blood (healthy adults have counts over 1,000). In addition to this, the definition also includes 26 health conditions which are opportunistic, meaning they would not cause the same severity of symptoms in healthy people as in the HIV-infected people who have a much lowered immune system that can fight off the bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites, and other microbes as easily.
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Some facts about AIDS
- AIDS is an opportunistic infection with a retrovirus
- Since May 1985, all blood donations in Australia have been tested for HIV virus (the same screening procedures were also set up in other countries around the same time), with more types of screen testing in place after that
- HIV infections are predominantly found in Africa (in 2007), although they are not eradicated in other countries around the world
- HIV is the most common sexual disease in Australia, which is spread by having intercourse without a condom or by sharing needles
- A person with HIV may no even display any symptoms of the disease, but they can still transfer the virus to another person through their body fluids (semen, blood)
- Drugs for HIV are used to delay AIDS-related illnesses, which invariably lead to death
- People with HIV who get opportunistic infections are classified as having AIDS
- There is a great deal of research on developing a vaccine for HIV and thus preventing AIDS
- AIDS was first reported in the USA in 1981
- The only way to prevent HIV infection and therefore AIDS is to not participate in risky behaviour - no unprotected sex, no sharing of needles
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2: symptoms of AIDS >
