Latest on HIV- Aids

What does AIDS stands for?

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome, (AIDS), is a state that describes a highly developed position of HIV infectivity.

What is HIV?

Scientists discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the early eighties. HIV is a germ that is transferred from being to being during the swap of body fluids such as vaginal secretions, semen, breast milk and blood. Sexual contact is the most frequent way to multiply HIV, but it can also be transmitted by distribution of needles when injecting drugs, or in childbirth and breastfeeding. While HIV reproduces, it damages the body’s immune structure and the body becomes vulnerable to infirmity and contagion. There is no identified heal for HIV virus.

Through AIDS, the virus has developed; causing significant loss of white blood cells or any of the cancers or infirmities that result from immune system smashes up. These illnesses and infections are said to be "AIDS-defining" because they mark the onset of AIDS. WHO designed a stage classification in the year 1990 for the patients infected by HIV

•    I: HIV infection is asymptomatic and not categorized as AIDS.

•    II: includes minor mucocutaneous manifestations and recurrent upper respiratory tract  infections.

•    III: includes unexplained chronic diarrhea for longer than a month, severe bacterial infections and pulmonary tuberculosis.

•    IV: includes toxoplasmosis of the brain, candidiasis of the esophagus, trachea, bronchi or lungs and Kaposi’s sarcoma; these diseases are indicators of AIDS.

What is the History of AIDS ?

World Health Organization has predicted that HIV (AIDS) has already taken more than 30 million lives since it was identified in 1981. A majority of researchers think that the dreadful Virus came from the Northern parts of Africa . Today more than 37million people are living with the infection throughout the world. In 2005, itself AIDS killed more than half a million of children, out of 3 million people infected by the AWFUL virus.

September 21, 2006 – Dr. Susana Valente’s tenure as an amfAR Fellow is only halfway through, but she has already published a key paper on a novel approach to attacking HIV. Working under the mentorship of Dr. Stephen Goff at Columbia University, her article in the August issue of the scientific journal Molecular Cell describes three key findings stemming from a single body of amfAR-funded work.

First, Dr. Valente identified a small protein fragment capable of drastically reducing HIV growth within a cell without endangering the cell’s ability to survive. Second, identification and extraction of this protein validated the discovery method used, which was pioneered by the Goff lab and holds great promise for uncovering other naturally-occurring inhibitors of HIV. Third, her work on the mechanism of action of this protein identified a step in the control of HIV growth that has not previously been the target of efforts for anti-HIV drug discovery, mediated by a region of the virus known as the 3′-LTR.

Valente and Goff began their work with the knowledge that HIV, like all viruses, requires normal cellular partners to enable its growth, and hypothesized that many key partners had not yet been identified. Using techniques of modern molecular biology, they first made a “library” of all 25,000 or so genes in a normal human cell. They then screened the library for the presence of any gene that might make proteins or proteins fragments that are critical for HIV’s growth.

Dr. Goff and other investigators, including several funded by amfAR, had already discovered and characterized several such genes as part of a long-standing amfAR research initiative targeting natural host resistance factors against HIV. Many of these genes are under active investigation with respect to development of new anti-HIV agents. The newest candidate identified by Valente and Goff is known as N-86-hnRNPU, as it was derived from the N, or amino, end of an 86 amino acid fragment of the normal cell protein, heterogeneous nuclear ribonuclear protein U. Although its precise mechanism of action will require further study, it appears to block the reproduction of HIV by preventing the export of HIV protein-encoding messenger RNAs from an infected cell’s nucleus to its cytoplasm, where viral proteins would normally be made and assembled into infectious particles.

Drs. Valente and Goff concluded their article by predicting that new lines of investigation opened by discovery of N-86-hnRNPU could “lead to important antiviral approaches in clinical settings.”

"Today we have a far more reliable estimate of the burden of HIV in India," said the Indian Health Minister, Anbumani Ramadoss. "The results show that there are an estimated two million to 3.1 million people affected with HIV-Aids. In terms of human lives affected, the number is still large, in fact very large. This is very worrying for us."

The new data has been backed by the UN, who publish the most widely trusted statistics on HIV and AIDS through their UNAIDS epidemic reports and updates.  The lowering of the caseload also lowers the HIV prevalence rate in India.  With a population of over one billion the new rate now stands at 0.36 percent, down from 0.9 percent. 

However, AIDS campaigners have warned that India should not become complacent.  A recent government survey revealed that more than 40 percent of Indian women have not heard of AIDS, meaning they do not have the knowledge to protect themselves from HIV.  The potential for the epidemic to grow rapidly is therefore quite high.

"I wish that AIDS had become half the problem that it was, but that’s not the right way to interpret it,” said Ashok Alexander, director of Avahan, the Gates Foundation’s AIDS project in India. "The threat is exactly as big as it ever was."

more : www.iavi.org