itch vaccine

Okay, just curious

1. Does AIDS have an incubation period? If so, how long?

2. If you're infected with AIDS due to sex/sharing of needles, etc. from another person, who is a carrier but not experiencing the symptoms (AIDS in the incubation period), would there be a possibility of you turning out to be a carrier and experience the symptoms only later on in life? If so, how long?

3. If you're infected with AIDS from your partner who is full blown with the virus, would you have a possibility of turning out as a carrier?

4. Would a carrier be eventually full blown with the virus later on in life?

... why am I asking? just curious really. couldn't find any similiarities in the search, must be because everyone knows the answers? ..

1010011010

I think you mean HIV. AIDS != HIV.

Following initial HIV infection, the virus does the more or less normal virus thing. Your body does the more or less normal thing, too, and mounts an immune response and fights the infection. The HIV test tests for the antibody generated during this immune response (this is why you can test HIV(neg) for 6 months or more following infection.

The quirk is that HIV can infect immune cells... so even though your immune system will clear it out of the rest of your body, it can't get rid of the infected immune cells. Over time the infection builds while simultaneously weakening the immune system. This is the so-called "incubation period".

The line drawn between "HIV Infection" v. "Full Blown AIDS" is pretty arbitrary. Part of the clinical definition of AIDS is a white blood cell count of less than a certain amount (cannot remember at the moment the specific type of cell or the specific number... I think it was a TC-4 of less than 300, but don't quote me on that).

Anyway. Yes, HIV has an "incubation period". The length depends on the strain of HIV you're infected with (there are at least seven), the severity of the initial infection (this has nothing to do with whether it was needles or sex or blood transfusion. This refers to when the virus first takes hold before your body mounts an immune response to beat it back into submission), and the general strength and robustness of your immune system overall.

The most important factor, though, is economic. If you can afford the groovy new drugs, you can basically keep AIDS at bay indefinitely. If you can't afford them, so sorry.

Short version:
1) Yes. It varies.
2) Yes. It varies.
3) Yes.
4) Yes, when they run out of money.

__________________
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

itch vaccine

Mmm, thanks for the great reply, that helped clear out some thoughts

Any idea of the "longest" incubation period possible?

Stompy

I was reading a site just the other day that says now it's typically 8-11 years.

I think it was much much faster in the 80's, but most medicine keeps it at bay.

What's odd is how they haven't found a cure for it yet.. from what I've read, it's not ever-changing like the common cold. I'm no bio-engineer or anything, but why is it so easy to cure ONE virus, but not another, especially one that's been studied for nearly 20+ years?

__________________
I love lamp.

Thermopyle

Just heard on swedish new that swedish doctors are going to start trying out a vaccination against HIV/AIDS on healty people. My guess is that HIV is not going to be a leathal deases for long. The question is if they can stop the epidemi in africa and other places?

__________________
Live life like you're gonna die, beacause you're gonna!

- William Shatner.

itch vaccine

mmm 8-11 yrs

so fuck now and think later? :P

hahahaa. just kiddin'

Thanks for the update on the vaccine, thermopyle.
I heard that it only infects humans? When tested on animals, it isn't lethal? hmm..

WillyPete

You can't cure viruses.
You never have the same cold or other virus twice. Your body builds a resistance to one particular variant.

People keep confusing that. You merely build up an immunity. The problem is, it attacks the very system that is meant to protect you.
When you then get other virus infections, that immune system kicks off and then the HIV infection can assume a full blown AIDS status.

1010011010

Even though you don't have AIDS, you are HIV+ and can infect others with HIV. I'm pretty sure you understood that, but I wouldn't want anyone thinking they weren't infectious unless they had AIDS.

Well, Human Immunodeficieny Virus only infects humans. There's SIV (Simian-IV... infects the other apes), FIV (felines), and probably a couple others. FIV is actually getting to be a pretty big problem in the stray population.

Not a hard rule. Initial infection may grant only partial immunity... meaning subsequent infections are possible, though the symptoms are less severe (I.E. you don't get as sick and/or get better quicker).
For some of the really fancy stuff, subsequent infections might have a totally different pathology than the initial infection. But, yeah, for the most part you only get really sick from a given virus strain once.

AIDS is pretty much a general immunodeficiency with HIV present. You can be in pretty much the same condition from chemotherapy or organ transplants, but you won't have AIDS, because you don't have HIV. HIV plays a pivotal, but very small, role in AIDS.

To address Stompy...
The reason HIV is so hard to cure (semantical issues about "curing HIV" aside) is because you have to figure out how to get rid of HIV without also getting rid of the immune cells that HIV infects.
"The cure was a success, but the patient died."

__________________
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

Jimellow

What percentage of the world has AIDs/HIV? What percentage of America?

__________________
Desperation is no excuse for lowering one's standards.

mo42

Now, the main problem with HIV is its tendency to mutate at an extremely rapid rate. Several times, scientists have isolated specific proteins which HIV requires to spread to other cells in the human body, and designed drugs to combat those specifically (eg AZT). The drugs are very successful, knocking out 99.9~% of the viruses. The problem is the one in one million or billion or whatnot of the multitudes of viruses in your body which have a defective gene for that protein, meaning that the drug will not affect them, and can replicate and retake the body, and futher doses of that drug will have little to no effect. As long as new drugs can be developed to combat the new mutations faster than the mutations can kill a person, HIV can be defeated, but this is a nearly impossible feat.

I had read a few years ago how there were a couple of cases of Nigerian prostitutes who had a natural resistance to the HIV virus, and that scientists were going to do some tests to figure out how this is so. I haven't heard anything about this since.

As far as %age of Africa, I don't have the figures offhand, but I'm pretty sure in some countries it's as high as 33-50%. America and the rest of the world is generally much lower; 1% or less, or at least they were whenever I last read figures on that.

__________________
It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got.

GWestling

Incubation periods can be quite long, years, as was mentioned.

It should be noted, though, that in terms of testing accuracy there is also an incubation period. My information on this is a little dated, so this may have changed. Last I know the test ELISE or ELISA I think it is called, requires about 6 months from the suspected contact in order for the test to be completely accurate.

As the last poster noted, HIV and AIDS are particularly tricky because they are retroviruses, which typically mutate at a much faster rate than other viruses. This makes eradicating the strain very difficult. Although they have made remarkable progress in terms of treating the symptoms.

1010011010

Inspired by some of mo42's comments, I found this very good page.

__________________
Simple Machines in Higher Dimensions

VitaminH

I've been studying HIV/AIDS in school right now, and I am sorry to say this is probably not the case. The problem with HIV is, as mo42 said, it mutates really fast. The HIV virus is similar to the common cold in this aspect. This is the same reason people have worked for years and years and never been able to come up with a cure for the common cold. Vaccines as we know them might not be capable of 'training' your immune system as they do to fight off diseases beacause the HIV virus just changes its outer coat to fast and to easily.

__________________
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
- Napoleon Bonaparte

alpo

Regarding the Nigerian prostitutes - they had a mutation in one of the receptors that the virus binds to. In order to get into the cell the virus infects, it must undergo a complicated series of connections before it can infect the cell. It's kind of like a locked door. The virus must have the right "keys" to get through the door and into the cell. The door on the cells of the prostitutes had a different kind of lock, so the virus was unable to get into the cell.

mo42

Ahh... that makes sense, and is the only way to combat HIV, now that I think about it. Once it is in your system, its numbers will be too large to effectively get rid of. But if the antibodies are present in enough numbers to get the HIV before it can replicate beyond a thousand or so (and thus have an exceedingly low chance of mutating successfully) or if the HIV can be otherwise prevented from infecting cells in the first place, like the receptor modifications, the disease can be prevented.

However, this only works if we have a way of getting the current HIV strands, which might mean that it might be best to stop giving AZT, etc. to people so that resistant strains are not born into the pool, or keep one method of HIV stoppage out of the combat to work as a vaccination agent.

Now I'm wondering if a high dose of AZT right at the time of infection could cure a person infected with HIV for a very short period of time. Like if someone was raped by an HIV-infected person, and they got AZT like the next day. Could this possibly prevent them from ever getting AIDS? Hmm... this could be thesis material, just do some tests with SIV... yeah, that'd work.

__________________
It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got.

Baron Opal

This is the theory in most hospitals, actually. If a health care worker is stuck with a contaminated needle they come to the pharmacy for some emergent doses of anti-virals. If the body is fully prepared the virus can be eliminated before it gains a foothold in the immune system. It's all theory, however. The only way to test it is to give people large doses of the medication and let them have unprotected sex or inject them with the virus directly. Not really ethical.

mo42

Now that I think about it, it would require a periodic dose from time to time, because almost certainly at least one HIV would infect a cell, and become integrated into the genome (that's what HIV does, and replicates from the human genome as part of your chromosome), and so it would always produce a small number of HIV particles. Still, that would have a good shot at working, since the number of HIV particles would likely be low enough that someone could live long enough for a natural death before a mutant variation arises and kills them.

__________________
It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got.

MSD

Magic Johnson has had been doing pretty well for a long time

itch vaccine

>.< sorry, don't get it?

mo42

Magic Johnson, part of the original Dream Team for basketball in the early 90s, was found to be HIV+ around that time. So he's been HIV+ for more than 10 years now.

__________________
It's not getting what you want, it's wanting what you've got.

Cross-Over

From an academic textbook I have, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 1 million persons in the United States are infected with HIV.

They referenced this from the CDC in 2000, and the text was published in 2002, so that number would be higher.

Amano

I dont think that would work. AZT is a chemically modified nucleotide (the building blocks that make up DNA) that works by preventing DNA from being replicated. Like some cancer chemotherapy drugs, it affects all cells, regardless of whether they are HIV infected (in fact, AZT was first developed as a cancer drug, and there's some evidence that it helps with some cancers, some evidence that it actually causes some cancers). Anyway, your idea doesn't sound too likely, I'm sorry to say. Using AZT immediately after HIV exposure would just prolong the inevitable...

ObieX

To clarify about the women in Africa that are seemingly immune to HIV there are many receptors on the white blood cell. HIV will attach it self to one type of receptor, inject its RNA and then the RNA will get to work replicating itself on the yummy DNA inside. I have drawn this out to show in somewhat better detail. My art is really shitty in paint, this took me about 15 minutes LOL, but should give you a better idea.



The women that are not effected by HIV do not have this "C" receptor, therefore the virus cannot attach and inject and replicate. In the future any treatment will probably revolve around this.

And for where i got this info i got this back in highschool at an HIV seminar that my advanced genetics class went to on a "field trip" of sorts. So this isnt from some teacher who thinks they know what they're talking about this is from professionals. This was about 1998 (i was a junior in a senior advanced class). My personal understanding of it may not be perfect, but the basic concept im explaining is sound if i remember correctly.

And while we're on the subject there has been news recently (like within the past couple of days) of a possible "cure". (actually there's been a few of them popping up within recent days, 3 different ones from the US and one from another country, i think it was either china or in taiwan.)

__________________
We Must Dissent.