AIDS :: AIDS Essays

In 1918 the United States experient one of the worst epidemics in its history. With 500,000 utterly in a calculate of 6 months, the Spanish influenza left its mark. With approximately 11.7 million dead humanswide, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome(AIDS) is still leaving its mark. It is a pandemic the likes of which the world has always feared to assimilate. The HIV virus comes in several varieties, yet they eat basically the same. Our understanding of this virus and how it works is essential to finding its cure, and to preventing its spread. Who it affects and the reasons for its diffusion are also important to fight against it. And finally, what can be do to treat and prevent it is essential. According to the World Health Organization we began to see what AIDS truly was in the late 1970s to early 80s, mostly in men and women with multiple sex partners located in East and Central Africa, but also in bisexuals and homosexuals in particularized urban areas of the Americas, Ausrtalasia and Western Europe. Aids was and is spread still by infected hypodermic needles which drug abusers are affected by, but also through transfusion of the blood and its components. And sadly, whenever a mother is infected, the unborn child lead almost positively receive the virus before, during, or after the pregnancy. The viruses which apparent motion AIDS, otherwise known as Human Immunodeficiecy Viruses(HIV) were first discovered in 1983 cooperatively by Dr. Robert Gallo of the National Cancer Institute and Dr. Luc Montagnier of the Pasteur Institute in France. Aids is caused mainly by the HIV-1 virus, while the HIV-2 virus is less marked among those infected. Scientists are puzzled as to why this dominant HIV-1 virus has 10 different genetic subtypes, some think that it is so the virus allow survive no matter what. HIV is part of a radical of viruses called retroviruses. This category basically describes how the virus transmits and reproduces itself. Which is to s ay that upon entering the physical structure the virus attaches itself to a T-4 cell(T-Helper cell), which is the type of cell that marks the bad things in our body so that another cell, the B-lymphocyte, can activate the production of antibodies, which are what would normally kill the virus. So, after attaching itself to this cell it thus injects its viral replicating DNA in, which then copies itself