Daily Health Advices

Posts Tagged ‘HIV’

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.

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 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.

It was discovered and considered as the agent of the emerging AIDS epidemic by Luc Montagnier’s team in France in 1983. The virion is spherical, equipped with an envelope and a capsid protein. The genome of a chain of single-stranded RNA to be temporarily copied into DNA in order to multiply and integrate into the genome of the cell it infects. The protein antigens of the outer casing are coupled specifically with membrane proteins of infected cells, especially T4 lymphocytes.

The process of converting RNA into DNA is a major characteristic of retroviruses and is performed by reverse transcriptase enzyme actions. With the demonstration of reverse transcriptase, began in the 1970s the search for human retrovirus, which in 1980 allowed the isolation of leukemia virus of adult T cells, HTLV-I (R. Gallo and al.)

HIV has a diameter of about 100 nanometers. Its outside is the “deck”, a membrane that originally belonged to the cell where the virus emerged. On the cover is a virus protein, gp41, or “transmembrane glycoprotein. Gp41 is connected to gp120, which can bind to the CD4 receptor located on the surface of T lymphocytes to penetrate them. The nucleus has a “capsid”, composed by the p24 protein. Inside is the RNA, the form of HIV genetic information.

In December 2006, according to the World Health Organization, 39.5 million people with HIV worldwide, of which 24.7 million lived in sub-Saharan Africa.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV by their initials in English) is a virus that destroys the immune system.

HIV targets are cells that have the CD4 marker, also known as helper T cells, which are blood cells that help your body fight disease. Over many years, the CD4 cells are destroyed. The body then has a weaker defense against infections such as lung infections, mouth and eyes. May occur some cancers such as lymphoma or cervical cancer.

When infections and other problems caused by the loss of CD4 cells, it is said that the person has acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is known by its initials as AIDS.