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Acquired immune deficiency syndrome: Difference between revisions
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Acquired immune deficiency syndrome (view source)
Revision as of 04:47, 16 October 2014
, 16 October 2014→Disease Itself
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== Disease Itself == | == Disease Itself == | ||
"AIDS" stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. Acquired means that it is not inherited from your parents but is something you acquire after birth. Immuno means the body's immune system which includes all the organs and cells that work to fight off infection or disease. Deficiency means that the immune system is deficient or is not working the way it should. Syndrome is a collection of symptoms and signs of disease. AIDS is a syndrome and not a single disease because of the fact that it is a complex illness with a wide range of complications and symptoms. AIDS is the progressed stage of HIV. Not everyone who has HIV progresses to AIDS. If a person has the proper treatment, "antiretroviral therapy" or ART, a person can keep the level of the HIV virus low. This treatment is the use of HIV medicines to fight HIV infection. It involves taking a combination of HIV medicines every day. The medicines control the virus so that a person can live a longer and healthier life and reduce the risk of transmitting HIV to other people. Before the introduction of ART in the mid-1990s, people with HIV could progress to AIDS in just a few years. Today, a person who is diagnosed with HIV and treated before the disease is far advanced, can have a nearly normal life expectancy.<ref name=AIDSgov>[http://www.aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/what-is-hiv-aids/ What Is HIV/AIDS?] ''AIDS.gov''. Web. 29 April 2014 ( | "AIDS" stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. Acquired means that it is not inherited from your parents but is something you acquire after birth. Immuno means the body's immune system which includes all the organs and cells that work to fight off infection or disease. Deficiency means that the immune system is deficient or is not working the way it should. Syndrome is a collection of symptoms and signs of disease. AIDS is a syndrome and not a single disease because of the fact that it is a complex illness with a wide range of complications and symptoms. AIDS is the progressed stage of HIV. Not everyone who has HIV progresses to AIDS. If a person has the proper treatment, "antiretroviral therapy" or ART, a person can keep the level of the HIV virus low. This treatment is the use of HIV medicines to fight HIV infection. It involves taking a combination of HIV medicines every day. The medicines control the virus so that a person can live a longer and healthier life and reduce the risk of transmitting HIV to other people. Before the introduction of ART in the mid-1990s, people with HIV could progress to AIDS in just a few years. Today, a person who is diagnosed with HIV and treated before the disease is far advanced, can have a nearly normal life expectancy.<ref name=AIDSgov>[http://www.aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/what-is-hiv-aids/ What Is HIV/AIDS?] ''AIDS.gov''. Web. 29 April 2014 (last updated).</ref> | ||
"HIV" stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Human means that this virus can only infect human beings. Immunodeficiency weakens your immune system, like stated before, by destroying important cells that fight disease and infection. A deficient immune system cannot protect a person. Virus means that it can only reproduce itself by taking over a cell in the body of it's host. HIV is like other viruses like the flu or common cold. However, there is an important difference, with other viruses, a person's body can clear most viruses out of the body with the immune system. With HIV, the human immune system cannot get rid of this virus. Therefore, once a person has HIV, they cannot get rid of it and will have it for the rest of their life. HIV can hide in a person's cells for a long period of time until they attack a key part of the immune system. It attacks the T-cells or CD4 cells. These cells fight infections and disease in a person's body. HIV invades them and uses them to make more copies of itself to destroy more of them. After awhile, if it destroys to many of a person's CD4 cells, the body cannot fight any infections and diseases anymore. When that occurs, HIV then is considered AIDS which is the final stage of HIV infection. People who are at this stage have badly damaged immune systems. This puts a person at risk for "opportunistic infections" or OIs. If a person has one or more specific OIs, certain cancers, or a very low number of CD4 cells, then they are considered to have progressed to AIDS. If that is the case, medical intervention and treatment is needed to prevent death in the near future.<ref name=AIDSgov/> | |||
== How it Comes About/Spreads == | == How it Comes About/Spreads == | ||
