Sambit Majumdar, Amity University Kolkata
HIV i.e. Human Immunodeficiency Viruses are two species of Lentivirus that infect humans. It is a virus that attacks the cells in the immune system. This virus destroys a type of white blood cell in the immune system called a T helper cell, also mention as a CD4 cell. This virus destroys C cells and makes a duplicate of itself and slowly weakens a person’s immune system. If HIV patients are not treated then it may take 10 to 15 years for the immune system to be so critically damaged that it cannot be defined. HIV is found in blood, semen, vaginal fluids, and breastmilk. They are mostly transmitted on sharing needles or syringes and during birth. It cannot be transmitted through sweat, saliva, coughing, sharing towels with someone infected. There is some coinfection that affects patients having HIV for example Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C, tuberculosis, and opportunistic infection.
Patients having HIV infection flu-like symptoms such as fever, fatigue may occur. There may be a primary infection, symptomatic stage, and asymptomatic stage. They may also experience a symptom like pain in abdomen areas, pain in swallowing food, gastrointestinal like nausea, vomiting, watery diarrhoea, etc, involuntary weight loss, skin rash, and many other symptoms. HIV infection is usually asymptomatic until it develops AIDS.
ELISA (Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay) test is used to detect HIV infection. Diagnosis is done through blood or saliva testing. The other test is antigen tests, antibody tests, nucleic tests (NATs). To determine the stage of the disease the appropriate treatment may be CD4 T cell count, Viral load (HIV RNA), Drug resistance.
Every drug treatment has some disadvantages. Many medications control complications. The drawbacks of medications are: To take medication regularly and one cannot miss any tablets, possible of food restriction, possible of drug interaction issues when used with other drugs.
The first person recovered from HIV “Timothy Ray Brown”. He was also known as the Berlin patient. He recovered by a bone marrow transplant from a donor who was resistant to HIV. A rare mutation part of DNA is called the CCR5 gene that restricts access to HIV and makes resistance to it.
This story inspired the researchers, patients, and the world that cure for the virus can be eventually be found.
Does obesity decrease brain functions?
Camelia Bhattacharyya, Amity University Kolkata “Is eating healthy food enough to maintain proper body weight?”, “Is obesity genetic?” “why is obesity a problem?”, these are a few questions most of us search on the internet every day, sometimes due to the fear of the diseases which follows obesity while other times due to maintaining physical […]