Daily Health Advices

A new American research seems to shed light on the relationship between HIV and alcohol. This report, published by The Lancet, says that countries with higher levels of HIV patients have at the same time, high alcohol consumption.

According to Dr. Katherine Fritz, the properties of alcohol may explain part of the widely observed association between alcohol use and risky sexual behavior. This would involve sex without adequate protection, having sex with different partners and the commercialization of sex.

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Scientists at the University of Michigan, have found a new and potent inhibitor of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) that causes AIDS: the banana lectin, which can help to prevent infection of immune cells by HIV.

This discovery may open the door to new treatments to prevent sexual transmission of the virus, because in laboratory tests this substance has proved to be as powerful as other anti-HIV drugs in use today (the T-20 or maraviroc).

It was known that this family of substances have the property of binding to sugars on the cover of infectious agents, thus facilitating detection and destruction by immune system cells. And what they have done the Michigan researchers is to test it with HIV, and compare the effect of two existing antivirals (with the difference that these drugs are used topically, they are injected or ingested).

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HIV is known for over 20 years. At that time HIV in the Netherlands only transmitted through blood, breast milk, semen and vaginal fluid. A screening takes place to ensure that safe blood and organs. Transfer of the HIV virus is only possible if the amount of virus that enters the blood directly is large enough.

If an infected child must incur a cut wound in the usual manner with standard first aid and hygiene measures are discussed. This method is effective in preventing transmission of all blood-borne infections, including HIV.

An infected child at school is no risk to staff or students. As said before: there is no case of HIV transmission at a Dutch school yet. There has never been a reported case of HIV transmission from child to child through biting, fighting, games or any other form of normal handling of children among themselves whatsoever.

Children who are injured or playing with injection material forms a major problem in the transfer of certain blood-borne viruses, but not with HIV. The success of needle exchange programs, the number of new HIV infections among intravenous drug users with low (Health Protection Agency and others, 2004). HIV can not go against oxygen and thus remains outside the body longer than a few minutes alive.

HIV is a sexually transmitted infection. Sexual and relationship education should provide students knowledge and skills which they can protect themselves from infection with the virus through unsafe sex.

Biologists concerned with the origin of species, family trees are the origin of species maps. On a pedigree you can see which species are closely related to each other and their common ancestor. A family can make based on appearance. So paleontologists managed on the basis of fossils to create a family tree showing how to read a prehistoric horse has evolved to a horse as we see trot in the pasture. But a tree does not only the origin of species to map out long since become extinct. You can also create a family tree of your own origins which are your direct ancestors. A tree containing yourself, your father and mother, your grandparents and your grandparents instance you can make under contract by using pictures. But probably a more reliable pedigree under the line of your DNA. Your DNA seems more like your father than that of your grandfather, because you’re more akin to your father or your grandfather. Now for a pedigree of the HIV DNA has been making a lot of different variants of the virus compared. To find out which “ancestor virus” on HIV-1 and HIV-2 belongs to biologists find a virus whose viral DNA resembles that of HIV-1 or HIV-2. They look as it were closely related viruses, like, cousins of HIV.
This nephews and niece viruses found in monkeys in Africa. The nephew of HIV called SIV. The S in SIV simian comes from the English word that means ape-like. There are already 26 known species of monkeys that carry the virus, ranging from chimpanzees. Monkeys infected with SIV themselves are not ill and get no monkey-AIDS, but the virus can transmit it to other monkeys and people. This is described further reading.

Symptoms of AIDS

• There are no specific symptoms of HIV
• The only way to confirm the existence of HIV is through testing for HIV in a blood sample.
• There are no specific symptoms of AIDS
• The only way to confirm the existence of HIV infection through HIV testing in a blood sample. It is important to have enough information about AIDS as a disease that is caused by the virus HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus)
• Some people reported that they had submitted a flu-like box between 2 and 5 weeks after infection (risk of contact). But not usually pay attention to this table because the reported cases represent only 10% of infections and symptoms would be like the flu. Therefore, the only way to know if there is infection be tested for HIV three months after exposure risk.
• There is no associated symptoms of infection, it is said that this infection is asymptomatic.
• However, transmission risk does exist if the person has symptoms of AIDS.
• Some people reported that they had submitted a flu-like box between 2 and 5 weeks after infection (risk of contact) as symptoms of AIDS. But not usually pay attention to this table because the reported cases represent only 10% of infections and symptoms would be like the flu. Therefore, the only way to know if there is infection be tested for HIV three months after exposure risk.
• Many people infected have no symptoms of AIDS, especially in the early years and in general for a long time.

The virus is weakening the immune system would slowly and after an average of 8-10 years without treatment (the disease had evolved and would be badly damaged immune system) when the following symptoms appear:

• sudden weight loss over 10%
• Fever or night sweats for more than a month
• or chronic diarrhea for more than a month
• acute or persistent fatigue
• Other symptoms of AIDS or effects: dry cough for over a month, hives, mouth ulcers, mouth and throat fungus, herpes and swollen glands.

A person is zero positive for HIV when the virus is in your body.

Usually no symptoms for long periods: 8-10 years on average without treatment.

The person looks and feels completely healthy but any person with HIV can transmit the virus. The virus is slowly weakening the immune system. When the immune system has deteriorated, is more susceptible to illnesses, especially infections (eg tuberculosis and pneumonia) and tumors.

AIDS : is an advanced stage of disease. It means that, as a result of immunodeficiency, the person has one or more of a list of rare diseases, which are called AIDS defining.

AIDS Information: There are 2 types of virus: HIV-1 is the most common in Spain and HIV-2 is located mainly in West Africa and generally produces a milder variant of the disease. Since 1981 the human immunodeficiency virus ravages the world.

The virion (particle infectivity) of HIV differs in structure from other retroviruses previously known. It is about 120 nm in diameter and is roughly spherical. Its genome is based physically in two  RNA copies (its sequence is as the corresponding messenger RNA) clothed by proteins, which form the nucleocapsid, and enclosed within a conical capsid, in turn surrounded by a shell of lipid bilayer , stolen first to the plasma membrane of the host cell, but endowed with self proteins. Inside the envelope there are enzymes in the virus, including a reverse transcriptase, an integrase – within the capsid – and a protease. The former is necessary for reverse transcription, DNA synthesis taking the viral RNA as template, and the second for the DNA so produced is integrated into the human genome became provirus.

The three main forms of transmission are:

• Sexual (unprotected sex). View (sexually transmitted disease). The disease is spread by contact with infected secretions, genital mucosa, rectal or oral sex the other person.
• Parenteral (by blood). It is a way of transmission through contaminated syringes given by intravenous drug use or through health services, as has happened sometimes in poor countries, do not use the best measures of hygiene also people, like hemophiliacs, who received a transfusion of contaminated blood products contaminated blood products, and to a lesser extent health care workers who are exposed to infection as an occupational accident may occur if a wound comes into contact with contaminated blood, and also during the realization of piercings, tattoos and scarification.
• Vertical (mother to child). Contamination can occur during the last weeks of pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding. In these situations, childbirth is the most problematic. Currently developed vertical transmission of HIV is completely controlled (if the mother is a known carrier of the virus) because since the beginning of pregnancy (and in some cases even earlier) is given to pregnant women treated with an anti – highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) particularly suitable for these situations, the delivery was by Caesarean section are generally suppresses the production of milk, and thus breastfeeding, and even antiviral treatment is given to the newborn.

The Centers for Disease Control CDC has reported that HIV has been isolated from blood, semen, saliva, tears, urine, Cerebrospinal fluid, amniotic fluid, breast milk , cervical secretions, and tissue of patients infected and non human primates experimentally infected  skin (especially when scratches, cuts, abrasions, dermatitis, or other injuries), mucous membranes of the eye, nose, mouth and possibly the respiratory tract (trachea, bronchi and lungs) should be considered a potential route  for entry the virus.

Are also present, and in sufficient quantities in the Cerebrospinal fluid, amniotic fluid, pleural fluid, synovial, peritoneal and pericardial.

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Since 1981, cases were detected striking infection Pneumocystis jiroveci (formerly named Pneumocystis carinii), a fungus related to the original forms of the Ascomycetes, known to infect severely immunocompromised patients. Initially there was a group of similar cases in which gay men were involved and where time appeared to cytomegalovirus infection, and Candidiasis. First thought that the cause should be linked to common practices among male homosexual population.

He soon began to appear cases involving heterosexual male or female intravenous drug users and their children, and also between patients and healthy habits homosexuals who had received transfusions of whole blood or blood products by hemophiliacs condition. Soon it was thought, by epidemiological criteria basically, that the cause must be an infectious agent transmitted in a similar way as does the hepatitis B virus
HIV-1 virions assembled at the surface of a lymphocyte.

Several teams started to get a virus associated with known cases of acquired immunodeficiency, perhaps as a retrovirus known to be produced immunodeficiency cat or HTLV, producer of a type of leukemia. In 1983, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, a team dedicated to investigating the relationship between retroviruses and cancer led by JC Chermann, F. Barre-Sinoussi, and L. Montagnier found a candidate who called lymphadenopathy-associated virus (lymphadenopathy-associated virus, LAV).

In 1984 the team of R. Gallo, discoverer of HTLV, the only human retrovirus known then, confirmed the discovery, but calling the virus human T lymphotropic virus type III (human T-lymphotropic virus type III, with the acronym HTLV-III). There was a subsequent dispute over the priority in which it became clear that Gallo had described the virus only after receiving samples from the French. As part of resolving the conflict, the virus acquired its final name, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in Castilian is expressed as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

In the same year, 1983, which identified the virus, several teams began work on its genome sequence published in early 1985, and also began the characterization of proteins.