WHAT IS HIV/AIDS?Each letter stands for the following terms:
H -- Human - this virus can only infect human beings
I -- Immuno-deficiency - the virus creates a deficiency, a failure to work properly, within a body's immune system
V -- Virus - the organism is a virus unable to reproduce by itself; it does so by taking over a human cell's machinery
HIV is the virus medical researchers believe causes AIDS. Since the vast majority of researchers believe that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS, we often refer to HIV as "the AIDS virus."
Like other viruses, HIV attacks cells in the body. But what makes HIV different is that the immune system can never fully get rid of HIV because the virus attacks the immune system itself--the very mechanism that would normally get rid of a virus.
Today there are medical treatments that can slow down the rate at which HIV weakens the immune system and that can prevent or cure some of the illnesses associated with advanced HIV disease. As with other diseases, early detection offers more options for treatment and preventive care.
WHAT IS AIDS?
The term AIDS applies to the most advanced stages of HIV infection. Each letter stands for the following terms:
A -- Acquired - a condition one must acquire or get infected with, not something transmitted through the genes
I -- Immune - it affects the body's immune system, the part of the body that fights off bacteria and viruses
D -- Deficiency - it makes the immune system deficient (that is, the immune system may not function properly)
S -- Syndrome - someone with AIDS may experience a range of different diseases and opportunistic infections
AIDS severely weakens the body's ability to fight infections and certain cancers. That is, people diagnosed with AIDS may have opportunistic infections, which are caused by microbes such as viruses or bacteria that usually do not make healthy people sick. The immune system of a person with AIDS is threatened to the point that medical intervention may be necessary to prevent or treat serious illness.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a part of the United States federal government, is responsible for determining who is classified as having AIDS. The CDC is also responsible for tracking the spread of HIV and AIDS in the United States.
The AIDS definition developed by the CDC includes the following conditions:- a person must be HIV positive, AND
- have a CD4 (T-cell) count below 200 OR one or more opportunistic infections
A positive HIV test result does not mean that a person has AIDS. A diagnosis of AIDS is made by a physician using the above clinical criteria.
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