HIV

971 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: The history of hiv essay

The world has seen the effects that the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) has had on individuals who have tested positive. HIV, a slowly replicating retrovirus, is the virus that causes the Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). AIDS causes the weakening of a person’s immune system and allows life-threatening opportunistic infections. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, there was a surge of people who died of mysterious circumstances. It caused a great scare, especially among men who have sex with men (MSM), which is a group that still is disproportionately affected by the virus to this day. Researchers at the time discovered that these mysterious deaths were attributed to a virus that has never had as much of an impact as it did during this time. There have been extensive advancements in HIV/AIDS research that have allowed for a better understanding of the virus, prevention methods, and advancements in treatment. As a Health Educator who does HIV testing and counseling, I have seen first-hand how people react to receiving a positive HIV test and it is crucial that these individuals know exactly what steps they need to take in order to live a long, healthy life.

HIV is spherical in shape with the diameter measuring at approximately 120 nanometers. It is an enveloped RNA virus, acquiring a phospholipid envelope as it sprouts out of the host cell during the replication process. Spike-like structures project from the envelope and the viral RNA then encodes these structures. Inside of the envelope consists of nucleocapsid that is made up of protein. The nucleocapsid has three enzymes that are needed for the virus to continue its life cycle. These enzymes are integrase, reverse transcriptase, and protease.

White b...

... middle of paper ...

...be up to 94% effective in preventing HIV transmission. It is recommended for individuals on PrEP to use the medication in combination with safe sex practices, such as condom use and altering behaviors to lessen the risk of infection. Another method to reduce risk is Post-Exposure Prophylaxis or PEP. PEP is similar to PrEP in the drug that is used, Truvada, to prevent transmission. PEP is ideal for individuals who may have been recently exposed to HIV. For example, if a person had an unprotected sexual encounter with someone who is known to be HIV-positive, that person would be a good candidate for PEP. PEP can only be used within 72-hours of the sexual encounter occurring and the person would take a month long medication regimen to prevent HIV transmission that could have occurred during that sexual encounter. Both PrEP and PEP demonstrate the advancement of

Show More
Related

  • AIDS/HIV

    857 Words  | 2 Pages

    Different people define success in many different ways. What is considered success by one person may be viewed as failure by another person. Randy Shilts, a homosexual newspaper reporter / author, attempts to make fundamental changes in America’s opinion on AIDS. In Randy Shilts’s essay, "Talking AIDS to Death," he speaks of his experiences as an "AIDS celebrity." At the core of Shilts’s essay is the statement, "Never before have I succeeded so well; never before have I failed so miserably"(221). Shilts can see his accomplishments from two points of view- as a success and as a failure. Despite instant fame, Shilts is not satisfied with the effects his writings has on the general public. Shilts’s "success" and reasons for failure can both be considered when one decides whether or not his efforts were performed in vain.

    Read More

  • Tuberculosis

    738 Words  | 2 Pages

    TB is a disease that can cause a serious illness and can damage a person's

    Read More

  • hiv

    675 Words  | 2 Pages

    HIV, like many other STD's is transmitted through unprotected sexual intercourse. However, it can also be transmitted by infected "blood transfusions", an infected mother to fetus, and sharing infected needles as well as breast milk (2009, NIAID). The reason it is really unlikely that a person should contract this virus by skin contact, is because the way HIV invades a person's system (2009, NIAID). The virus itself has special markers on its plasma membrane called "CD Markers" that locate specific cells within a person's body that target specific cells such as helper-T Cells and Microphages (2012, Phelan). The HIV virus cannot invade cells that it cannot latch on to, so a handshake with a person who has HIV will not transfer the disease because skin cells do not have the appropriate receptors that the virus can attack. When the HIV cells find the specific cell it targets, they attach themselves to its surface and then releases its DNA proteins into the cell. The virus's DNA then take over the host cell's DNA and commands it to create copies of the HIV virus. The cell produces viral RNA which creates viral proteins that migrate to the cell edge and form an undeveloped HIV virus which then is expelled from the cell and matures into a new copy of the HIV virus.

    Read More

  • AIDS in African American Community

    1310 Words  | 3 Pages

    Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) was first recognized as a new disease in 1981 when increasing numbers of young homosexual men succumbed to unusual opportunistic infections and rare malignancies (Gallant49).During this time, many people were contacting this disease because it was not discovered yet and people did not have knowledge about it.Scientists believe HIV came from a particular kind of chimpanzee in Western Africa. Humans contracted this disease when they hunted and ate infected animals. A first clue came in 1986 when a morphologically similar but antigenically distinct virus was found to cause AIDS in patients in western Africa (Goosby24). During this time, scientists had more evidence to support their claim about this disease. Once discovered this disease was identified as a cause of what has since become one of the most devastating infectious diseases to have emerged in recent history (Goosby101). This disease was deadly because it was similar to the Black Death, it was killing majority of the population. Since its first identification almost three decades ago, the pandemic form of HIV-1 has infected at least 60 million people and caused more than 25 million deaths ...

    Read More

  • Freely Accessible Birth Control for Teenagers

    960 Words  | 2 Pages

    Spink, Gemma. "AIDS." AVERTing HIV and AIDS. 23 Dec 2009. Web. 11 Jan 2010. .

    Read More

  • Tuberculosis

    903 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tuberculosis (TB) is an infection that can attack any part of the body, but it is normally found in the lungs (Huether, McCance, Brashers and Rote, 2008,). TB is an infection caused by a acid-fast bacillus also know as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Huether et al. 2008) It is one of the leading causes of death in Asia, China, Indian, Indonesia and Pakistan (Huether et al. 2008). These countries show that in most cases the incidence rate is highest in young adults, and are usually the result from re-infection in recent infections. The spread of TB is attributed to the emigration of infected people from high-prevalent countries, substance abuse, poverty, transmission in crowd places, and the lack of proper medical care for the infected individuals (Huether et al. 2008).

    Read More

  • HIV AIDS

    850 Words  | 2 Pages

    Today millions of people globally are plagued with HIV/AIDS; some of which were contracted unknowingly through heterosexual sexual contact, others unknowingly through homosexual contact and surprisingly some who set out to contract HIV/AIDS purposefully. Bareback sex refers to intercourse without the use of any barrier protections to prevent the transmission of bodily fluids between participants. This is an extremely high risk behavior given the number of sexually transmitted diseases, and not knowing the status of HIV in them or in their partners. Unfortunately, in some developing countries the technology and condom supply are very little in respect to the sexually active population, and therefore results in more cases of STD’s and HIV/AIDS.

    Read More

  • Birth Control

    500 Words  | 1 Pages

    These options include the patch, the ring, and the shot. The shot, of the hormone progestin, is applied in the arm or buttock every 12 weeks to, prevent release of egg or, prevent fertilized egg from implanting in uterus. A thin plastic patch placed on the skin of the buttocks, stomach, upper outer arm, or upper torso once a week for three weeks in a row. The ring is a small, flexible hoop inserted deep into the vagina for three weeks in a row and taken out the fourth week. The Ring protects against pregnancy by releasing estrogen and progestin.

    Read More

  • Tuberculosis

    932 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tuberculosis. It was the cause of countless deaths throughout the history of humanity. It has been a fearful disease and has existed with humans for thousands of years; in the past two centuries alone, it ruthlessly murdered and crippled billions of people! It also has been called the white plague or white death, as this single microbe can be so devastating. It is one of the diseases that has tormented humans for ages and the story of this gruesome slaughterer continues even today.

    Read More

  • The History of HIV

    1456 Words  | 3 Pages

    Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS) first came to light in 1981. There has been a long and arduous global effort on the prevention of HIV/AIDS. HIV is a virus that is spread through body fluids that affect the specific T-cells of the immune system. Without treatment HIV infection leads to AIDS and there is no cure for AIDS. HIV infection can be controlled and the importance of primary pre...

    Read More

  • Mother to Child transmission of HIV

    700 Words  | 2 Pages

    When HIV (Human immunodeficiency virus) was first discovered as a disease in 1980, the affected individuals were stigmatized to the extreme. HIV/AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) was first reported with homosexuals and IV drug users, which led the Center for Disease Control (CDC) to label the disease as Gay-related Immune Deficiency, as “gay” individuals were synonymous “drug users” due to their similar activities in the 1980’s (Stine 22). However, it soon became clear that female population were just as susceptible to contracting HIV as males.

    Read More

  • Mandatory HIV Testing is Wrong

    1389 Words  | 3 Pages

    Laurent Mandelbrot et al., Lamivudine-Zidovudine Combination for Prevention of Maternal-Infant Transmission of HIV-1, 285 JAMA, 2083, 2083-2093 (2001).

    Read More

  • AIDS: cause And Effect

    752 Words  | 2 Pages

    In 1981, a new fatal, infectious disease was diagnosed--AIDS (Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome). It began in major cities, such as New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and San Francisco. People, mostly homosexual men and intravenous drug users, were dying from very rare lung infections or from a cancer known as Kaposi’s sarcoma. They have not seen people getting these diseases in numerous years. Soon, it also affected hemophiliacs, blood recipients, prostitutes and their customers, and babies born from AIDS-infected women. AIDS was soon recognized as a worldwide health emergency, and as a fatal disease with no known cure, that quickly became an epidemic. When high-profile victims began to contract the virus, such as basketball star Magic Johnson, the feeling spread quickly that anyone, not just particular groups of people, could be at risk. AIDS impairs the human body’s immune system and leaves the victim susceptible to various infections. With new research, scientists think that the disease was first contracted through a certain type of green monkey in Africa, then somehow mutated into a virus that a human could get. AIDS is a complicated illness that may involve several phases. It is caused by a virus that can be passed from person to person. This virus is called HIV, or Human Immuno-deficiency Virus. In order for HIV to become full-blown AIDS, your T-cell count (number of a special type of white-blood cells that fight off diseases) has to drop below 200, or you have to get one of the symptoms of an AIDS-induced infection.

    Read More

  • Tuberculosis

    810 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tuberculosis (TB) is an ancient disease, with evidence found in human remains dating back over 9000 years, to the Neolithic era. 1 It was identified and described by Hippocrates as early as 460BC, and continued to be documented in such places as ancient Rome, Egypt, India and China. 2 3 4 5

    Read More

  • Preventing HIV/ AIDS

    1036 Words  | 3 Pages

    The emergence of HIV/AIDS is viewed globally as one of the most serious health and developmental challenges our society faces today. Being a lentivirus, HIV slowly replicates over time, attacking and wearing down the human immune system subsequently leading to AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) at which point the affected individual is exposed to life threatening illnesses and eventual death. Despite the fact that a few instances of this disease have been accounted for in all parts of the world, a high rate of the aforementioned living with HIV are situated in either low or medium wage procuring nations. The Sub-Saharan region Africa is recognized as the geographic region most afflicted by the pandemic. In previous years, people living with HIV or at risk of getting infected did not have enough access to prevention, care and treatment neither were they properly sensitized about the disease. These days, awareness and accessibility to all the mentioned (preventive methods, care etc.) has risen dramatically due to several global responses to the epidemic. An estimated half of newly infected people are among those under age 25(The Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic). It hits hard as it has no visible symptoms and can go a long time without being diagnosed until one is tested or before it is too late to manage.

    Read More

More about HIV

Open Document