Why do people get AIDS?

AIDS, the full medical name is "acquired immunodeficiency syndrome-AIDS", is an infectious disease caused by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is worth mentioning that HIV itself will not cause any diseases, but when the immune system is destroyed by HIV, the human body will die of other diseases due to loss of resistance! Generally speaking, AIDS is a serious infectious disease in which the immune system of human body is destroyed by AIDS virus, which makes human body lose resistance to various life-threatening pathogens, produces various infections or tumors, and finally leads to death. This virus is contagious for life, destroying people's immune system and making people lose their ability to resist various diseases. When the immune function of HIV-infected people is severely damaged by the virus, so that it is impossible to maintain the minimum disease resistance, the infected people will develop into AIDS patients. With the decrease of human immunity, the frequency of human infection with various pathogenic microorganisms will become higher and higher, and the degree of infection will become more and more serious, which will eventually lead to death due to various compound infections. Aids is mainly transmitted through blood, improper sex, drug abuse and mother-to-child inheritance. So far, there are no effective drugs and treatments for the prevention and treatment of AIDS in the international medical community. Therefore, AIDS is also called "super cancer" and "century killer".

HIV, referred to as HIV, is a virus that can attack the human immune system. It targets T4 lymphocytes, which are the most important in the human immune system, devours and destroys T4 lymphocytes in large quantities, thus destroying the human immune system, eventually causing it to collapse, and making the human body sick and die because of losing its resistance to various diseases. Scientists call this virus "human immunodeficiency virus". The average incubation period of HIV in human body is 12 to 13 years. They look normal before they develop into AIDS patients, and they can live and work for many years without any symptoms.

The transliteration of the English abbreviation AIDS has been translated into "AIDS" and "love to death". 198 1 was first discovered and confirmed in America. After the virus invades, the human body loses its immune function and is easily infected with other diseases and dies. Usually transmitted through sexual contact, intravenous injection and blood transfusion. Known as the "plague of the 20th century".

The difference between HIV and AIDS

HIV stands for human immunodeficiency virus. After people are infected with HIV, the virus begins to attack the human immune system, and one function of the human immune system is to repel diseases. After several years, HIV has weakened the immune system. At this time, people will suffer from opportunistic infections, such as pneumonia, meningitis and tuberculosis. Once an opportunistic infection occurs, this person is considered to have AIDS. AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. AIDS itself is not a disease, but a state or syndrome that cannot resist other diseases. People will not die from AIDS, but from AIDS-related diseases.

Differences between HIV-infected people and AIDS patients

HIV-infected persons refer to those who have been infected with HIV, but have not shown obvious clinical symptoms and have not been diagnosed with AIDS; Aids patients refer to people who have been infected with HIV and have obvious clinical symptoms and are diagnosed with AIDS. The similarity between the two is that they both carry HIV and are contagious. The difference is that AIDS patients have obvious clinical symptoms, while HIV-infected people have no obvious clinical symptoms and look like healthy people. This period is called incubation period, and incubation period is asymptomatic infection period. During this period, there were no conscious symptoms and positive signs except HIV antibody. The incubation period ranges from half a year to 12 years, and a few can reach more than 20 years. The average incubation period of HIV in human body is 6 years.

The Origin and Development of AIDS

There are many legends about the origin of AIDS. Some people say that it was artificially developed by Germany during World War II. Some people say that it was developed by the Japanese; It is also said that God brought human beings to punish their sexual promiscuity. Wait, most of them are unfounded. Understanding the history of human development of AIDS is actually a very necessary thing, which helps human beings to prevent and conquer AIDS. In fact, the origin of AIDS should be in Africa. 1959 Congo is still French territory. An aborigine who came out of the forest was invited to participate in a research related to blood infectious diseases. After his blood sample was tested, it was refrigerated and dusty for decades. Unexpectedly, decades later, this blood sample turned out to be an important clue to solve the source of AIDS.

AIDS originated in Africa and was brought to the United States by immigrants. On June 5th, 198 1, the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta, USA briefly introduced the medical history of five AIDS patients in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly, which was the first official record of AIDS in the world. In 1982, this disease is named "AIDS". Soon after, AIDS quickly spread to all continents. 1985, a young foreigner who traveled to China fell ill and died soon after being admitted to Peking Union Medical College Hospital, and was later confirmed to have died of AIDS. This is the first time that China has discovered AIDS.

Aids is a serious threat to the survival of mankind, which has attracted great attention from the World Health Organization and governments all over the world. Aids is spreading faster and faster around the world, seriously threatening human health and social development, and has become the fourth killer threatening human health. UNAIDS announced on May 30, 2006 that since the first diagnosis of AIDS in June, a total of 65 million people were infected with HIV in 25 years, of which 2.5 million died. By the end of 2005, there were 38.6 million HIV-infected people in the world, with 465,438+million new HIV-infected people in that year, and another 2.8 million people died of AIDS. In June 2006, UNAIDS and the World Health Organization (WHO) released the latest information on the global AIDS epidemic in 2006 in Geneva. The report shows that the global AIDS epidemic is still on the rise: at present, 39.5 million people are infected with HIV, 2.6 million more than in 2004, including 2.3 million children under the age of 15. In 2006, 2.9 million people died of AIDS worldwide, including 380,000 children under 0/5. In the same year, 4.3 million people were newly infected, of which 65% (about 2.8 million people) appeared in sub-Saharan Africa. Call on governments to pay full attention to preventing the spread of AIDS in order to prevent the situation from worsening. According to experts, it takes several years, even as long as 10 or even longer, for HIV-infected people to develop into AIDS patients from the initial stage of infection. Aids patients will have a variety of infections due to extremely low resistance, such as herpes zoster, oral mold infection, tuberculosis, enteritis, pneumonia, encephalitis caused by special pathogenic microorganisms and so on. Malignant tumors often occur in the later stage until they die of long-term consumption and general failure.

Although many medical researchers around the world have made great efforts, so far, no specific drugs have been developed to eradicate AIDS, and there is no effective preventive vaccine. At present, this kind of "super cancer" with a mortality rate almost as high as 100% has been listed as a Class B legal infectious disease in China, and it is one of the infectious diseases monitored by frontier health. Therefore, we call it "super terminal disease".

AIDS clinical phase 3

1. HIV infection. The patient has no clinical symptoms after being infected with HIV, only the HIV antibody in the blood is positive;

2. AIDS-related syndrome. In addition to inguinal lymph nodes, the patient has two or more lymph nodes of unknown origin for more than 3 months, and at the same time has systemic symptoms, such as fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, emaciation, diarrhea and so on.

3. AIDS stage. The outstanding manifestations of patients are pathogenic infection, malignant tumor and undetectable cellular immune deficiency.

But not everyone infected with HIV necessarily has three clinical stages. Some people (60%-70%) have no symptoms at the initial stage of HIV infection, that is, asymptomatic carriers. About 25%-30% of infected people develop AIDS-related syndrome (ARC) within 3-5 years, and then about 10%-25% of infected people develop typical AIDS again, about 10 years.

HIV has weak resistance to the external environment. After leaving the human body, it can only survive for a few hours to a few days at room temperature. High temperature, dryness and common disinfectants can kill the virus. Although there is no vaccine that can effectively prevent AIDS at present, there are many antiviral drugs used in clinical treatment, which can effectively inhibit the replication of HIV in human body, alleviate the symptoms of AIDS patients and prolong their lives to a great extent.

Clinical symptoms of AIDS

The clinical symptoms of AIDS are varied, such as common cold, flu, general fatigue, loss of appetite, fever, weight loss and so on. With the aggravation of the disease, the symptoms are increasing day by day, such as candida albicans infection, sticky skin, herpes simplex, herpes zoster, purpura, hematoma, blood blister, ecchymosis, easy skin injury, bleeding after injury and so on. In the future, it will gradually invade the internal organs and continue to have fever for unknown reasons, which can last for 3-4 months; Cough, shortness of breath, persistent diarrhea, bloody stool, hepatosplenomegaly, malignant tumor, dyspnea, etc. It could happen. Because the symptoms are complex and changeable, not every patient has the above symptoms. There are usually more than one or two symptoms. According to damaged organs, dyspnea, chest pain, cough, etc. Often occurs when the lung is invaded; If it invades the gastrointestinal tract, it can cause persistent diarrhea, abdominal pain, emaciation and weakness. Such as thrombotic endocarditis and thrombocytopenic cerebral hemorrhage caused by vascular invasion.

Many people infected with HIV have no conscious symptoms in the incubation period, but some people may have fever, dizziness, fatigue, sore throat, joint pain, rash, superficial lymphadenopathy and other symptoms similar to "cold" in the initial stage of infection, and some people may have diarrhea. This symptom usually lasts for 1-2 weeks, and then the patient turns to asymptomatic incubation period. Latent patients have HIV in their blood and HIV antibody in their serum is positive. Such people are called HIV-infected people, or HIV carriers for short, or drug carriers for short. People infected with HIV are highly contagious and are the most important source of infection for the spread of AIDS.

In a long incubation period, although infected people have no conscious symptoms and look like ordinary people, the whole immune system continues to be destroyed by HIV. When the immune system function can no longer maintain the minimum defense ability, a variety of pathogenic microorganisms that will not cause diseases to normal people will make patients conditionally infected, causing diseases and symptoms in the brain, lungs, gastrointestinal tract and other parts. Some malignant tumors are also caused by patients' extremely low resistance. The symptoms of AIDS patients are different because of the different internal organs where conditional infection occurs and the different parts where tumors occur.