Research paper on AIDS

The aim of this paper is to carry out a profound research and inform about AIDS. In order to attain this objective the paper will describe the disease process and explain in detail the system that is primarily involved in the disease. Further, pathogenesis, beginning at a cellular level and progressing to a certain point, associated with the disease will be described. Also the paper will identify and explain signs and symptoms of AIDS and expand how these signs and symptoms represent some of the structural (physiologic) and functional changes taking place in the body. To provide a fully valuable research two diagnostic tests leading to a diagnosis of the disease and marking the significance of the findings will be discussed. The detailed description of the medical management, including two pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions that could be used for treatment or palliation, will be included.

Introduction

Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (or AIDS) is a disease, which strikes the immune system of humans, making it weak and unable to fight any kind of virus infection. The outbreak of AIDS was firstly recorded in three Californian hospitals in 1981. U. S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention observed five homosexual men, who had pneumonia, called Pneumocystis carinii. Two infections were specific to them: cytomegalovirus and mucosal candidiasis. Normally, people suffer from these diseases on daily basis and overcome them gradually, taking prescribed medicine and going through general treatment. However, the men died and, with their death, claimed the beginning of something new, a new virus that, as the scientists found out further, had no cure (Sonenklar, 2011).

Since that time more and more people died of unknown cause, previously believed to be a simple lung disease. Those people were mostly drug addicts and homosexuals, however, the disease has spread even further. Nowadays, approximately thirty-three millions of people, no matter the ethnicity, the gender and the age, have AIDS (Sonenklar, 2011).

What exactly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) does to humans and how it progresses within the body? This question and many others will be answered in further steps of the research.

AIDS, the course of the disease on cellular level

According to Carol Sonenklar, AIDS can be defined as follows, “Acquired means that you catch it; Immunodeficiency means the body’s immune system, which fights off disease, is weak; and Syndrome means a group of health problems that makes up a disease” (Sonenklar, 2011).

There are several ways one can acquire this disease. The most common way HIV spreads is through sexual contact. Either the relationship is traditional or homosexual, if one person in it is infected the other stands no chances. In this case, the virus enters the body through vagina’s lining, vulva, penis, rectum or mouth, when practicing unsafe sex. The second way is through sharing the same syringes. Here, HIV gets into the body using contaminated needles. The third way is called “mother to child”. If the mother that carries the child is HIV infected, she is definitely to pass this deathly disease upon her innocent child. The forth way found is through blood transfusions. Blood transfusion has always been a medical procedure, which transmitted the necessary blood taken from one person to another. However, if the blood donor was previously infected (even not being aware of it) the recipient will 100% catch the disease (Sonenklar, 2011).

Once HIV enters the body, its particle, containing two copies of HIV RNA, finds a T cell and attaches itself. Membranes of both the virus and the cell fuse together. Next, viral RNA is converted into DNA within the T cell by HIV reverse transcriptase. Then the newly made HIV DNA moves to the nucleus of the T cell, where it becomes part of the host’s DNA with the help of another HIV enzyme, integrase. As a part of the cell’s genes, this HIV DNA becomes a provirus. The very provirus thrives towards life by creating new viruses. The new viruses are called copies, or more scientifically – messenger RNA (mRNA). These messengers are produced in a process of transcription, which uses the enzymes of the host cell. Host cells are usually used to create more copies of the HIV. After HIV mRNA is made in the cell’s nucleus, it moves to the cytoplasm or the cell’s inner fluid. There, HIV wins the cell’s protein-making machinery that has the mission to create long chains of viral enzymes and proteins. Newly made HIV infected proteins, enzymes, and RNA form a “bud”. The very bud remains “good” up until a viral enzyme protease splits the long chain of viral proteins and enzymes into smaller pieces. These smaller virus particles are infectious (Sonenklar, 2011).

Signs and Symptoms of AIDS

As a major disease, AIDS has multiple phases and symptoms. The first signs of HIV positive can occur within a long period of time, due to personal disease flow of each separate human. This period is characterized by fatigue, mild fever, sore muscles, occasional diarrhea, and swollen glands. When the symptom of swollen glands occur this means that HIV became active and B-lymphocytes transformed into plasma cells and secrete HIV antibodies. The antibodies produced are ineffective against the virus (Weeks & Alcamo, 2011).

Further infectious symptoms include extended lymphadenopathy, 10% loss of the total body weight, constant low-grade fever, diarrhea over a couple of weeks, overwhelming fatigue, saturating night sweats and others (Weeks & Alcamo, 2011).

The symptoms, which surely pinpoint AIDS are: persistent lymphadenopathy, constant low-grade fever, substantial nausea and fatigue, vomiting, severe psychological stress, saturating night sweats, extensive headaches, possible wasting syndrome, unrelenting diarrhea, dramatic weight loss, severe fluid imbalance and others, gradually leading all the human vital functions towards an end (Weeks & Alcamo, 2011).

If to divide these changes into physiological and functional, the first group will include different causes that convert the HIV infected body from normal state towards critical. These may be – weight loss, swollen lymph glands, low body temperature, and so on. Functional aspect of changes presupposes irregular malfunctions, which influence normal work of the body organs and immune system. Healthy functions convert to disastrous failure of systemic body organs one by one.

Diagnostic tests, diagnosis

Tests to detect HIV positive carriers have been the part of the health care system. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention defines AIDS as, “the presence of one of twenty-five conditions that indicate that the immune system is severely weakened because of HIV infection”. Moreover, AIDS are diagnosed when the T cell count has dropped in number to fewer than 300 cells per cubic millimeter of blood, while normal rates are between 500 and 1,600 cells (Sonenklar, 2011).

Blood tests are merely taken to measure these T cell counts, antibodies and the viral load (Sonenklar, 2011).

According to Benjamin S. Weeks, I. Edward Alcamo ,positive HIV test should include such devastating illnesses as “cryptosporidiosis, cytomegalovirus, isosporiasis, Kaposi’s sarcoma, lymphoma, lymphoid pneumonia (hyperplasia), Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy, toxoplasmosis, candidiasis, coccidioidomycosis, cryptococcosis, herpes simplex virus, histoplasmosis, extrapulmonary tuberculosis, other mycrobacteriosis, salmonellosis, other bacterial infections, HIV encephalopathy (dementia), and HIV wasting syndrome” (Weeks & Alcamo, 2011).

There is also a criteria-based definition for HIV Infection. A reportable HIV infection present in adults, adolescents, or children of more than 18 months age should include laboratory criteria:

positive result on a screening test for HIV antibody, followed by a positive result on a confirmatory test for HIV antibody (Western blot or immunofluorescence antibody test) or positive report of the detectable quantity on any of the following HIV virologic (nonantibody) tests:

HIV nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) detection;

HIV p24 antigen test, including neutralization assay;

HIV isolation (viral culture) (Weeks & Alcamo, 2011).

Also Clinic criteria:

Diagnosis of HIV infection, based on the criteria found by the laboratory, however it should be medically recorded by a physician;

Conditions that meat criteria included in the case definition for AIDS (Weeks & Alcamo, 2011).

Children aged less than 18 months having HIV positive test are likely to be reported definitive if laboratory criteria positive results on two separate specimens (excluding cord blood) using one or more of the following:

HIV nucleic acid (DNA or RNA) detection;

HIV p24 antigen test, including neutralization assay, in a child 1 month of age;

HIV isolation (viral culture) (Weeks & Alcamo, 2011).

Presumptive test results would not meet the general reported criteria if the HIV antibody test occurs to be negative (Weeks & Alcamo, 2011).

Treatment of AIDS

HIV positive carriers of the disease should be always managed and monitored and treated by a doctor. Sometimes it takes years to monitor the level of viral infection and the general state of the infected immune system. According to Hung Fan, Ross Conner, Luis Villarreal the primary measure of the immune system status is the T cell count in circulation. The very state of the individuals carrying HIV is monitored by showing the active replication of the virus (Fan, Conner & Villarreal, 2011).

In order to treat the disease combination of antiviral therapies of HIV-infected are standard. Nowadays the most effective way of treatment is the combination of “two nucleoside analogs and one protease inhibitor of NNRTI”. Moreover, treatment as well as monitoring should not be omitted as human’s life can be endangered. Pharmacological companies and developers based on finding HIV cure have produced different medicine and chemical therapies. With their help, HIV-carriers can be partially cured or their lives can be profoundly prolonged. However, there is no universal cure from AIDS and scientists still try to find one (Fan, Conner & Villarreal, 2011).

Conclusions

AIDS happens to be one of the most death-causing syndromes in the world. The HIV-infected people experience the most horrible signs of this disease flow on their outer and inner bodies. The causes of the infection are inevitable, moreover, even treatment cannot fully eliminate this disease from the human organism. AIDS can be transmitted by sexual contact, blood transfusions, mother to child, syringes and needles and other disgusting ways. Once the virus gets into the body, it affects the immune system in such a way it becomes weak and unable to fight even small daily infections like the simple running nose. Within time, the immune system weakens and devastates itself to such an extent that the HIV-carrier experiences death.

References

Fan, H., Conner, R. F., & Villarreal, L. P. (2011). Aids : Science and society. (6th ed., pp. 87-91). Sudbury, Mass.: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Sonenklar, C. (2011). Aids. (Vol. USA today health reports). Minneapolis: Twenty-First Century Books.

Weeks, B. S., & Alcamo, I. E. (2011). Aids: The biological basis. (5th ed.). USA: Malloy, Inc.