AIDS Report Essay Research Paper What is

AIDS Report Essay, Research Paper What is AIDS?AIDS is the more evolved, life threatening, form of HIV. AIDS stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. The name comes from the fact that HIV severely damages the immune system, the body?s most important defense against disease. History of AIDSScientists are not certain how, when, or where the AIDS virus evolved and first infected people. Researchers have shown that HIV-1 and HIV-2 are more closely related to simian immunodeficiency viruses, which infect monkeys, than to each other. Thus, it has been suggested that HIV evolved from viruses that originally infected monkeys in Africa and was somehow transmitted to people. Scientists believe HIV infection became widespread after significant social changes took place in Africa

during the 1960’s and 1970’s. Large numbers of people moved from rural areas to cities, resulting in crowding, unemployment, and prostitution. These conditions brought about an increase in cases of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS. HIV may have been introduced into industrialized nations several times before transmission was sustained and became widespread. AIDS was first identified as a “new” disease by physicians in Los Angeles and New York City in 1980 and 1981. The doctors recognized the condition as something new because all the patients were previously healthy, young homosexual men suffering from otherwise rare forms of cancer and pneumonia. The name AIDS was adopted in 1982. Scientists soon determined that AIDS occurred when the immune system became

damaged, and that the agent that caused the damage was spread through sexual contact, shared drug needles, and infected blood transfusions. After HIV was isolated as the cause of AIDS in 1983 and 1984, researchers developed tests to detect HIV infection. These tests have also been used to analyze stored tissues from several people who died from the late 1950’s and 1970’s. Scientists have concluded that some of these people died from AIDS. Cases of HIV infection reported worldwide have risen dramatically since the early 1980’s. During the early 1990’s, an estimated 1 million people in the United States and millions more throughout the world had HIV infection or AIDS. Efforts to control the spread of AIDS have had some success. For example, among homosexual men in the

United States, HIV infection is spreading more slowly than it did in the early 1980’s. This is due entirely to education about prevention and the resulting changes in sexual behavior, such as decreased numbers of sexual partners and increased use of condoms. HIV blood tests, which became available in 1985, caused a gradual decline in transfusion-related cases in the late 1980’s. The rate of AIDS in other groups rose, however, during the 1980’s and into the 1990’s. These groups include heterosexual men and women, children born to HIV-infected women, people who inject drugs, and younger homosexual men. CauseAIDS is caused by the human immunodeficiency virus HIV. By killing or impairing cells of the immune system, HIV progressively destroys the body?s ability to fight

infractions and certain cancers. Individuals diagnosed with AIDS are susceptible to life threatening diseases called opportunistic infections, which are caused by microbes that usually do not cause illness in healthy people. Symptoms/ Incubation periodMany people do not develop any symptoms when they first become infected with HIV. Some people however have a flu like illness within a month or two after being exposed. Other symptoms would include enlarged lymph glands, tiredness, fever, loss of appetite and weight, diarrhea, yet infections of the mouth and vagina, and night sweats. Also often getting many bacterial infections like infections of the intestinal track, lungs, brain, eyes, and other organs. Cancers are also signs of HIV, due to the fact that your immune system is