Chapter 1

Question 1

What does HIV stand for?

Answer 1

Human Immunodeficiency Virus. It is a parasite that afflicts cells in the human immune system

Question 2

What does HIV cause?

Answer 2

AIDS

Question 3

What is AIDS?

Answer 3

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome

Question 4

Why did early AIDS treatments, like the drug izodothymidine (AZT), looked promising when first used but prove ineffective in the long run?

Answer 4

AZT was effective at first because it stops the virus from using its reverse transcriptase. However, in the long run, the drug also affected healthy cells and would cause the cell to make less thymidine kinase,

Question 5

Why does HIV kill people?

Answer 5

It is an opportunistic infection which leads to AIDS, during the infection stage the patient’s immune system has collapsed and can no longer fend off a variety of opportunistic viruses, bacteria and fungi that rarely cause problems for people with robust immune systems

Question 6

Why are some people resistant at becoming infected or to progressing to disease once they are infected?

Answer 6

READ

Question 7

Where did HIV come from?

Answer 7

READ

Question 8

What is the worst epidemic recorded in history?

Answer 8

Influenza in 1918, with 50-100 million deaths

Question 9

What are HIV virions and how do they work?

Answer 9

It is the extracellular phase of the virus. Virions enter the host’s cell by binding to proteins on their surface, then use the host cell’s own machinery to make new virions