Hiv Essay

Specific skin cancers including Kaposi's Sarcoma and lymphomas also happen in patients who are HIV positive” (Mayo Clinic, 2013).

The term Human Immunodeficiency Virus is commonly known as (HIV), which is a virus that attacks the immune system of humans by destroying the amount of CD4 cells in their bodies. Without CD4 the human body is unable to fight against diseases, which can lead to Acquired Immune deficiency syndrome known as AIDS for short. The first case of the HIV/AIDS virus in the U.S. occurred in the early 1980’s. The first spark of the virus was found in San Francisco with couple of homosexual Caucasian American males. Today African Americans account for the largest proportion of HIV and AIDS in this country, represent approximately 13% of the U.S. population, but accounted for an estimated 44% of new HIV infections in 2010(the last year a study was

Human immunodeficiency Virus also known as HIV is a sexually transmitted disease. It attacks your body's immune system. The virus destroys CD4 cells, which help your body fight diseases. HIV damages your immune system and it leads to acquired immune deficiency syndrome also known as AIDS. AIDS is the final stage in HIV, and it’s a disease where severe loss of the body's cellular immunity occurs. The disease lowers the resistance to infection and malignancy. Anyone can get HIV/AIDS. Men, women, and children, of all different races and descents can get infected with the virus. People who are gay or straight can also be infected with HIV/AIDS. There is currently no cure for HIV/AIDS. HIV treatments may reduce

The last fifteen years have seen a reemergence of interest in cancer immunosurveillance and a broadening of this concept into one termed cancer immunoediting. The latter, supported by strong experimental data derived from murine tumor models and provocative correlative data obtained by studying human cancer, holds that the immune system not only protects the host against development of primary nonviral cancers but also sculpts tumor immunogenicity. Cancer immunoediting is a process consisting of three phases: elimination (i.e., cancer immunosurveillance), equilibrium, and escape. Herein, we summarize the data supporting the existence of each of the three cancer immunoediting phases. The full understanding of the immunobiology of cancer immunosurveillance and immunoediting will hopefully stimulate development of more effective immunotherapeutic approaches to control and/or eliminate human cancers.

It is important to understand the origin of AIDS-related lymphoma. According to the article “AIDS-Related Malignancies,” AIDS-related lymphoma is believed to be caused by the overproduction of B-lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell that is an important aspect of immunity. The low level of T-lymphocytes, another type of white blood cell, is characteristic of HIV, and it contributes to the unusual

Lymphoma is a type of cancer that happens when lymphocytes start acting abnormally. Lymphocytes are white blood cells that work to protect the body from infection and alien bodies, preventing disease. These are found in the lymph nodes, spleen, bone marrow, and other organs. When Lymphoma cancer has started, the lymphocytes may start to divide and reproduce at abnormal rates, usually much faster than regular. Aside from the afore mentioned, lymphocytes in people who have lymphoma cancer may even exceed their supposed lifetime [i].

Comments made decades ago by the architects of the cancer immunosurveillance hypothesis, Burnet and Thomas, that “there is little ground for optimism about cancer” (Burnet, 1957) and “the greatest trouble with the idea of immunosurveillance is that it cannot be shown to exist in experimental animals” (Thomas, 1982), reflect the problems that, until recently, fomented intense debate over whether natural immune defense mechanisms can protect the host against the development of cancers of nonviral origin. The difficulty was clear: if immunosurveillance of

Thirty-five years on June 5, 1981, what began with five cases of a rare lung infection (Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia) among five otherwise healthy gay men eventually emerged as global health crisis, which in 1982, was formally identified as acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). Another two years would pass before scientists were able to isolate the retrovirus that causes AIDS, which in 1984 was termed human immunodeficiency viruses (HIV). Although a successful discovery, in the absence of a proven treatment, HIV and AIDS had free rein in which to leave in its wake a global path of fear, illness, and death. To understand the totality of HIV/AIDS, consider the following. Since the onset of the pandemic more than 70 million people have been infected with HIV, 35 million people have died of AIDS-related illnesses, and globally, at the end of 2015, an estimated 39.8 people were living with HIV (World Health Organization, 2016). Notwithstanding the global significance of HIV/AIDS, this paper, aside from a historical overview of HIV/AIDS, will focus solely on the continuing public health threat of HIV/AIDS in the United States.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV was first clinically observed in the United States in June 1981 in healthy young gay men, originating in Los Angeles, California. On June 5th 1981, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), quite quietly, published an article describing five cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) in gay men in this region with two of the five already dead. This Morbidity and Morality Weekly Report (MMWR) issued by the CDC is the first reporting of the AIDS outbreak that was soon to follow. Once the report was issued, the CDC received 26b reports of similar cases of this pneumonia along with Kaposi’s Sarcoma (KS), a rare skin cancer, among the same demographic in New York and California. Because the disease was limited to the gay male population, and little was known about it besides the fact that it targeted the immune system, it was called GRID among the media standing for Gay- Related Immune Deficiency. By years end, 270 cases of severe immune deficiency in gay males were reported with 121 already reported dead. In 1982, the term AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome was first used by the CDC along with reporting a case definition to medical professionals and the public.a In the few years to follow, the CDC determined the other routes of HIV infection and transmission following discovery in infants and women and the World Heath Organization (WHO) got involved in the epidemic. By 1985, at least one case of HIV virus had been

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) affects the human wellbeing by attacking the body’s immune system which is the natural defense system in the human body to resist infections. When the immune system is being compromised, the body becomes less capable of fighting diseases, allowing the body to become more susceptible to infections. Different from other viruses that the body can get rid of, HIV will remain in the body for life (Wright and Carnes, 2016). HIV works by attacking the CD4, which assists the immune system to resist infections. If not treated the virus decreases the number of T-cells in the body, thus making the person’s immune system highly prone to infections or infection-related cancers (Wright and Carnes, 2016). After the body’s immunity is actively depleted, therefore allowing opportunistic infections to invade the body, the patient will be approaching the final stage of HIV, also known as the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), quickly (Wright and Carnes, 2016).

In the mid-1970s, Steve Rosenberg and colleagues at the National Cancer Institute, USA pioneered the tumor immunology field with several seminal studies (Moticka, 2016d). First, they showed that interleukin 2 (IL-2) treated mouse splenocytes in in vitro cultures were cytotoxic to mouse tumors when adoptively readministered (Yron, Wood, Spiess, & Rosenberg, 1980). Subsequently, the group demonstrated partial regression (21/55, ~38%) of tumors using autologous IL-2 primed T-cells from the peripheral blood of several metastatic melanoma cancer patients in what would be the first in human adoptively transferred T-cell human clinical trials (S. A. Rosenberg et al., 1985). The Rosenberg group was also the first to demonstrate in mouse models that tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) were 50-100 times more cytotoxic against autologous tumors, which would later be revealed to be a tumor-specific CTL-memory response (S. Rosenberg, Spiess, & Lafreniere, 1986). In the 1970s, with the discovery of viral mediated tumors in the form of the human papillomavirus (HPV) (zur Hausen, Gissmann, Steiner, Dippold, & Dreger, 1975), Epstein Barr Virus (EBV) , and Hepatitis B virus (HBV) (Buynak, 1976), indicated further that the adaptive immune system could be used against treating tumors.

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a lentivirus (a subgroup of retrovirus) that causes HIV infection and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). AIDS is a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive. Without treatment, average survival time after infection with HIV is estimated to be 9 to 11 years, depending on the HIV subtype. Infection with HIV occurs by the transfer of blood, semen, vaginal fluid, pre-ejaculate, or breast milk. Within these bodily fluids, HIV is present as both free virus particles and virus within infected immune cells.

It is imaginable for anyone to foresee that they would have been heartbroken to discover someone who worked with them or rode the same train as them had HIV/AIDS. It was a disease that the carrier did not talk about at all because of the death sentence it carried or stigma associated with it.

The pandemic known as AIDS was first found in a human blood sample around the year 1959 and was later introduced to the United States in the late 1970s to early 1980s. “From 1979–1981 rare types of pneumonia, cancer, and other illnesses were being reported by doctors in Los Angeles and New York among a number of male patients who had sex with other men (“Where did HIV come from?”).” Due to these occurrences, doctors did their research and were able to trace the cause of this fatal disease called Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. AIDS is a disease that developed from the virus, HIV, which is a virus that attacks the immune system. AIDS can commonly be called the third and final stage of HIV, because the virus has entered its most severe stage in its life span and the cell count of a person’s immune system has dropped below 200. “When the number of your CD4 cells falls below 200 cells per cubic millimeter of blood (200 cells/mm3), you are considered to have progressed to AIDS. (In someone with a healthy immune system, CD4 counts are between 500 and 1,600 cells/mm3.)(“What Are The Stages of the HIV Infection?”).” The disease has shown to increasingly weaken our immune system by killing off T-cells that act as defenders to prevent illnesses and diseases. Although, AIDS has been reported in many cases all over the world, the actual spreading of AIDS is impossible. People who have AIDS are not infected with the disease directly, instead they are infected with HIV which later

In 1982 CDC described Aids as “A disease at least moderately predictive of a defect in cell mediated immunity, occurring in a person with no known case for diminished resistance to that disease” (History of HIV and Aids.) Aids is a serious infection that occurs when someone has HIV. If a person has been tested positive for HIV is not likely to have Aids. Aids occur when the body becomes so weak it cannot defend itself against infections. “An HIV-positive person is diagnosed with AIDS if his or her immune system weakens, as indicated by the number of CD4 cells in his or her blood. A CD4 cell count less than 200 in an HIV-infected person gives someone a diagnosis of AIDS” (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.) “HIV is very good at cloaking it’s self in the body. This way the virus can move through the body almost undetected killing cells along the way. It also makes its way to the neuroglial cells in the brain and spine. This is the main problem defending against HIV, it’s is