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"AIDS is an acronym for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and is defined
as a collection of symptoms and infections resulting from the depletion of the immune system caused by infection with the
human immunodeficiency virus, commonly called HIV. Although treatments for both AIDS and HIV exist, there is no known cure.
The rate of clinical disease progression varies widely between individuals and has been shown to be affected by many factors
such as host susceptibility, immune function, health care, the presence of co-infections and peculiarities of the viral strain.
AIDS is thought to have originated in sub-Saharan Africa during the twentieth century and is now a global epidemic. The World
Health Organization estimated that, worldwide, between 2.8 and 3.5 million people with AIDS died in 2004."
-Wikipedia
AIDS is:
Acquired: must do something to contract
Immune: ability to fight off infectious agents
Deficiency: lack of
Syndrome: cluster of symptoms that are Characteristic for a disease
HIV is:
Human: isolated to the human species
Immuno-Deficiency: Lacking the ability to fight off infectious agents
Virus: a disease causing agent
AIDS was first reported in the United States in 1981 and has since become a major worldwide epidemic. More than 830,000
cases of AIDS have been reported in the United States since 1981.
Symptoms of AIDS
Many people do not have any symptoms when they first become infected with HIV. Some people, however, have a flu-like illness
within a month or two after exposure to the virus.
This illness may include:
* Fever
* Headache
* Tiredness
* Enlarged lymph nodes
These symptoms usually disappear within a week to a month and are often mistaken for those of another viral infection.
During this period, people are very infectious, and HIV is present in large quantities in genital fluids.
Other symptoms often experienced months to years before the onset of AIDS include:
* Lack of energy
* Weight loss
* Frequent fevers and sweats
* Persistent or frequent yeast infections (oral or vaginal)
* Persistent skin rashes or flaky skin
* Pelvic inflammatory disease in women that does not respond to treatment
* Short-term memory loss
Aids is caused by the virus HIV. However, having HIV is not the same as having AIDS.
The causes of HIV include:
*having sex with an infected person
*sharing a needle with an infected person
*a child will get aids if their mother is infected at the time of their birth
"The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a number of drugs for treating HIV infection. The first
group of drugs used to treat HIV infection, called nucleoside reverse transcriptase (RT) inhibitors, interrupts an early stage
of the virus making copies of itself. Included in this class of drugs (called nucleoside analogs) are AZT, ddC (zalcitabine),
ddI (dideoxyinosine), d4T (stavudine), 3TC (lamivudine), abacavir (ziagen), and tenofovir (viread). These drugs may slow the
spread of HIV in the body and delay the start of opportunistic infections."
-myDNA AIDS/HIV Medical Information
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