Since the start of the HIV and AIDS crisis, about 100 million people have been infected with HIV and over 35 million people have died from it. While the numbers are not rising like before, HIV is no longer a death sentence provided there is access to the right medicine early enough to start tackling it. So it is possible that a lot of you have heard different stories about HIV, and some people might even believe that it is a curse from their ancestors to punish their current generation. Well, your ancestors wouldn't be that cruel to you because they wouldn't want their generation to be wiped out of history but sincerely, it wasn't your ancestors, so let's discuss HIV and AIDS.
HIV or Human Immunodeficiency Virus is a virus as the name implies but which type of virus; a retrovirus. Ok! retroviruses uses RNA as its genetic material instead of DNA. This retrovirus (HIV) infects the immune cells in the body, notably the CD4 T Cells and when it does so, it begin to make a DNA version of its genome after which the DNA is inserted into the host's genome. This simple act of HIV is why it is very difficult to treat and why scientist have been doing a lot of research.
When the CD4 helper T cells recognizes a foreign invader, they trigger the release of enzymes that trigger numerous immune response and since HIV first finds its way into the cell, it is very difficult for the cell itself to fight against itself. HIV can be transferred from one person to another via bodily fluid (breast milk, semen, vaginal fluid and blood) which is why it can be gotten from breastfeeding, sex, and blood transfusion but that isn't all, using dirty needles with the virus can transfer the virus to someone else if it is used to swap fluids. In all of the bodily fluids, saliva isn't one of them as it contains antibodies and antimicrobial proteins, so unless the saliva has a lot of blood in it, it shouldn't be a way to transmit the virus.
When people are infected, they usually come down with flu-like symptoms, headaches, fever, rash, muscle pain, and joint pains and this is as a result of the immune system fighting themselves since the virus already possess them but after few weeks, the symptoms subsides as the body produces antibodies that keep the virus in check but this check isn't forever. While the person can stay without the symptoms for a long time possibly decades, they will begin to manifest these symptoms again and this time more seriously because so many T-Cells have been killed by the virus within the period when it was dormant and at this point, an individuals are unable to protect themselves from pathogens.
It is at this time that a people is said to have AIDS. Yes! that elder cousin of HIV. A person is diagnosed with AIDS when the T Cell count fall below 200 cells per microliter of blood compared to the normal count which is within the rage of 500 and 1500 microliters per blood. This is why AIDS patient usually come down with opportunistic illnesses which would have been ward off in a person without AIDS.
In the 80s the knowledge of AIDS wasn't fully known, one thing that doctors knew was that suddenly healthy young GAY men developed extremely rare infections including cancer and it was responsible for killing them. In the 1980s, an immunologist at UCLA noticed that gay men within the age of 20 and 30 came down with unusual pneumonia (Pneumocystis jirovesi) which would normally not infect the lungs of healthy people. Soon, other medical practitioners started to see different scenarios where gay men came down with ailments that would not infect normal healthy people.
Since scientists didn't know the cause, if it was a pathogen or an infection, they decided to name it Gay Related Immune Deficiency (GRID) since it was associated with gay men but it wasn't only gay men who had these diseases, people who were hemophiliacs (people who blood didn't clot well) also had this diseases. IV drug users, infants, women and heterosexual men also began having these immune diseases.
In 1983, the CDC issued a warning for doctors to be careful when transfusing blood as well as be careful about the blood to be transfused. With all this, the infectious agent needed to be found and so scientists began working. With this, Biologist Luc Montagnier who suspected it was a virus began to work with his colleague to find out what virus it was and his research from blood work of people who died from AIDS showed a retrovirus. Other scientists found retroviruses in the blood of people who died from AIDs and so in 1986, the name HIV was coined.
Soon blood works from monkeys showed similar viruses which was called Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) and there was another strain in chimpanzee which was similar to HIV, and then it was said that they passed the virus to humans. To explain how we got it from these animals, there was the cut-hunter hypothesis that talked about the virus contracted when humans were hunting monkeys and chimpanzees where a cut in the hunter's hand led to blood from the SIV infected chimpanzee entering into the human. To know when humans first got infected with HIV-1 scientist had to look backwards and they saw that humans had the first HIV case in 1908.
The HIV and AIDS crisis has left an indelible mark on humanity, with millions of lives lost and countless others affected. While the numbers may no longer be escalating at the alarming rates seen in the past, HIV remains a formidable challenge that requires ongoing attention and resources. Access to timely medical intervention and proper treatment can transform what was once considered a death sentence into a manageable chronic condition.
Read More
https://www.beintheknow.org/understanding-hiv-epidemic/context/origin-hiv-and-aids
https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/about-hiv-and-aids/what-are-hiv-and-aids
https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/whatishiv.html
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/hiv-aids
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3119211/
https://www.iflscience.com/where-did-hiv-come-25077
https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/history/hiv-and-aids-timeline
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/june_5.htm
https://img.thebody.com/cdc/pdfs/mmwr04jul81.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234451/
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.6200936
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3234451/
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6004a11.htm
I remember as a child, people released songs on HIV and warning people about the virus.
One of the things that still amazed me is the fact that we have really talked about hiv and aids for quite a number of years but it actually looks like till now, the medical scientist have not been able to find cure to it actually
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