HIV/AIDS Flashcards
What is AIDS
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS, is a disease caused by a virus that attacks the immune system.
What is the virus called that causes Aids?
The virus that causes AIDS is called human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.
How HIV Affects the Body
o HIV is the only kind of virus known to attack the immune system directly.
o Once it invades the body, HIV enters T cells and reproduces inside them.
o People can be infected with HIV—that is, have the virus living in their body cells—for years before they become sick.
o More than 30 million people in the world may be infected with HIV.
o Eventually HIV begins to destroy the T cells it has infected.
o Damage to the immune system is usually slow. But as the viruses destroy T cells, the body loses its ability to fight disease.
o Most persons infected with HIV eventually develop the disease AIDS.
o Because their immune systems no longer function properly, people with AIDS become sick with diseases not normally found in people with healthy immune systems.
o At this time, there is no cure for AIDS. However, new drug treatments allow people with the disease to survive much longer than in the past
How HIV is Spread
o Like all other viruses, HIV can only reproduce inside cells. In the case of HIV, the virus reproduces inside T cells. However, it can survive for a short time outside the human body in body fluids, such as blood and the fluids produced by the male and female reproductive systems.
o HIV can spread from one person to another only if body fluids from an infected person come in contact with those of an uninfected person.
o Sexual contact is one way in which this can happen.
o HIV may also pass from an infected woman to her baby during pregnancy or childbirth or through breast milk.
o In addition, when drug users share needles, some infected blood may get into the needle and then infect the next person who uses it.
o A person can also get HIV through a transfusion of blood that contains the virus. But since 1985, all donated blood in the United States has been tested for signs of HIV, and infected blood is not used in transfusions.
What are the ways in which HIV is not spread?
o HIV does not live on skin, so you cannot be infected by hugging or shaking hands with an infected person.
o You can’t get infected by using a toilet seat after it has been used by someone with HIV.
o And HIV is not spread when you bump into someone while playing sports.
