HIV/AIDS

HIV/AIDS

No one can be certain about how or when the AIDS virus emerged. The closest related disease would be a simian immunodeficiency virus. This is where the suggestion arose that this disease was first contracted from a primate. It has also been thought that this once primate-only disease had evolved and somehow became transmitted to people. On June 5, 1981, the first report of AIDS hit the United States. The people weren't quite sure of what they were dealing with, so mistakenly, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention released an article concerning a strange outbreak of pneumonia within the male homosexual community. What we have now come to call as AIDS has grown into public health and is a worldwide phenomenon, which has yet to cease spreading. The disease is contracted so rapidly that researchers say no matter how bad things seem to be; the worst has yet to come.

HIV is a life-threatening disease that attacks your body in a matter of about nine quick steps. First, this virus attacks by disabling a body's immune system and mixes things up so that your body begins to produce the virus. Next, the virus enters each cell by attaching to the cell receptors. The viral core enters the cell and the protein envelope fuses with the cell wall. Then it enters the nucleus and fuses into cellular DNA. This leads to the good cells producing the HIV cells. To make HIV the viral DNA and the RNA create and enzyme known as protease. These new cells gather at the edge of the wall and become infectious proteins. Once these proteins are formed, the viral particles exit the cell and begin again. As a result the newly formed virus spread like fire, rapidly infecting the remainder of the healthy cells.

The HIV virus is transmitted in one or more of the three ways listed. They are sexual intercourse, direct contact with infected blood, and transmission from an infected woman to her baby. The most common source of infection comes as a result of sexual intercourse, which includes anal, oral and genital. Although this virus was first introduced as the homosexual disease, statistics show that HIV is becoming more frequent in heterosexual men and women. Contamination by infected blood can occur in many forms.