More than 20 years ago, an epidemic of the most terrible and incomprehensible viral disease of our time, AIDS, began in the world. Its infectiousness, rapid spread and incurability have earned the disease the fame of the "plague of the twentieth century."
More than 20 years ago, an epidemic of the most terrible and incomprehensible viral disease of our time, AIDS, began in the world. Its infectiousness, rapid spread and incurability have earned the disease the fame of the "plague of the twentieth century."
History of origin
Acquired Immunodeficiency Virus (AIDS), caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), is a deadly disease for which there is currently no cure.
Some scientists believe that the HIV virus was transmitted from monkeys to humans around 1926. Recent research indicates that a person acquired this virus in West Africa. Until the 1930s, the virus did not manifest itself in any way. In 1959, a man died in Congo, and later medical research, analyzing his medical history, indicated that this was possibly the first recorded death from AIDS in the world. In 1969 in the United States, the first cases of an illness with symptoms of AIDS were recorded among prostitutes. Then doctors did not pay special attention to them, considering them a rare form of pneumonia. In 1978, homosexuals in the United States and Sweden, as well as heterosexual men in Tanzania and Haiti, showed symptoms of the same disease.
And only in 1981, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported the detection of a new disease in young homosexuals in Los Angeles and New York. In the United States, about 440 carriers of the HIV virus have been identified. About 200 of these people have died. Since most of the patients were homosexuals, the new disease was called "Gay Related Immuno Deficiency" (GRID) or "Homosexual Cancer" (A Gay Cancer).
On June 5, 1981, an American scientist from the Center for Disease Control, Michael Gottlieb, first described a new disease that deeply affects the immune system. A thorough analysis led American researchers to the conclusion about the presence of a previously unknown syndrome, which in 1982 was named Aquired Immune Deficience Syndrom (AIDS) - acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). At the same time, AIDS was called the disease of the four "H", after the capital letters of English words - homosexuals, hemophiliacs, Haitians and heroin, thus highlighting the risk groups for the new disease.
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Immune deficiency (decreased immunity), from which AIDS patients suffered, was previously encountered only as a congenital defect of premature newborns. The doctors found that in these patients, the decrease in immunity was not congenital, but was acquired in adulthood.
In 1983, the French scientist Montagnier established the viral nature of the disease. He found a virus in a lymph node removed from an AIDS patient, calling it LAV (lymphadenopathy associated virus).
On April 24, 1984, the director of the Institute of Human Virology at the University of Maryland, Dr. Robert Gallo, announced that he had found the true cause of AIDS. He managed to isolate the virus from the peripheral blood of AIDS patients. He isolated a retrovirus called HTLV-III (Human T-lymphotropic virus type III). These two viruses were found to be identical.
In 1985, it was found that HIV is transmitted through body fluids: blood, semen, breast milk. In the same year, the first HIV test was developed, on the basis of which donated blood and its preparations began to be tested for HIV in the USA and Japan.
In 1986, Montagnier's group announced the discovery of a new virus called HIV-2 (HIV-2). A comparative study of the HIV-1 and HIV-2 genomes has shown that in evolutionary terms, HIV-2 is far from HIV-1. The authors suggested that both viruses existed long before the modern AIDS epidemic. HIV-2 was first isolated in 1985 from AIDS patients in Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands. Studies have shown that diseases caused by HIV-2 and HIV-1 are independent infections, since there are differences in the characteristics of pathogens, clinic and epidemiology.
In 1987, the World Health Organization approved the name of the causative agent of AIDS - "human immunodeficiency virus" (HIV, or in the English abbreviation HIV).
In 1987, the WHO Global AIDS Program was established and the World Health Assembly adopted the global AIDS strategy. In the same year, in a number of countries, the first antiviral drug - azidothymidine (zidovudine, retrovir) - was introduced into the treatment of patients.
It must be emphasized that HIV and AIDS are not synonymous. AIDS is a broader concept and means immunity deficiency. This condition can arise as a result of a variety of reasons: in chronic debilitating diseases, exposure to radiation energy, in children with defects in the immune system and in elderly patients with involution of immune defense, some medications and hormonal drugs. Currently, the name AIDS is used to refer to only one of the stages of HIV infection, namely its manifest stage.
HIV infection is a new infectious disease that was named before the discovery of its pathogen as acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). HIV infection is a progressive anthroponous infectious disease with a blood-contact mechanism of infection, characterized by a specific damage to the immune system with the development of severe immunodeficiency, which is manifested by secondary infections, malignant neoplasms and autoimmune processes.
The source of HIV infection is a person with AIDS or an asymptomatic virus carrier. The main mechanism of infection transmission is blood contact. The disease is transmitted through sexual contact, especially homosexual ones; from an infected mother to a child during pregnancy through the placenta, during childbirth, during breastfeeding from mother to fetus; through razors and other piercing and cutting objects, toothbrushes, etc. HIV epidemiologists do not allow the existence of airborne and fecal-oral transmission routes, since the excretion of HIV with sputum, urine and feces is very insignificant, and the number susceptible cells in the gastrointestinal tract and respiratory tract.
There is also an artificial transmission route: during medical and diagnostic manipulations by the penetration of the virus through damaged skin, mucous membranes (transfusion of blood and its preparations, transplantation of organs and tissues, injections, operations, endoscopic procedures, etc.), artificial insemination, with the intravenous administration of drugs, performing various kinds of tattoos.
The risk group includes: passive homosexuals and prostitutes, who are more likely to damage the mucous membranes in the form of microcracks. Among women, the main risk group is drug addicts who inject drugs intravenously. Among sick children, 4/5 are children whose mothers have AIDS, are infected with HIV or belong to known risk groups. The second most frequent place is taken by children who have received blood transfusions, the third - by hemophilia patients, medical personnel who have professional contact with blood and other biological fluids of HIV-infected patients.
The immunodeficiency virus can exist in the human body for ten to twelve years without showing itself in any way. And many people do not pay enough attention to the initial signs of its manifestation, taking them for the symptoms of other, at first glance, not dangerous diseases. If you do not start the treatment process on time, the final stage of HIV - AIDS begins. The immunodeficiency virus can become the basis for the development of other infectious diseases. Along with the risk of developing AIDS, the risk of other infectious diseases also increases.
Symptoms
Fever for more than 1 month, diarrhea for more than 1 month, unexplained weight loss of 10% or more, protracted pneumonia, recurrent or not responding to standard therapy, persistent cough for more than 1 month, prolonged, recurrent viral, bacterial, parasitic diseases, sepsis, swollen lymph nodes two or more groups over 1 month, subacute encephalitis, dementia in previously healthy people.
The last stage - AIDS - proceeds in three clinical forms: onco-AIDS, neuro-AIDS and infectious-AIDS. Onco-AIDS is manifested by Kaposi's sarcoma and brain lymphoma. Neuro-AIDS is characterized by a variety of lesions of the central nervous system and peripheral nerves. As for infectious AIDS, it manifests itself in numerous infections.
With the transition of HIV to the final stage - AIDS - the symptoms of the disease become more pronounced. A person is increasingly beginning to be affected by various diseases, such as pneumonia, pulmonary tuberculosis, herpes virus and other diseases called opportunistic infections. It is they who lead to the most dire consequences. At this time, the immunodeficiency virus becomes a serious illness. It happens that the patient's condition is so serious that the person is not even able to get out of bed. Such people most often are not even subject to hospitalization, but are at home under the supervision of people close to them.
Diagnostics
The main method of laboratory diagnosis of HIV infection is the detection of antibodies to the virus using enzyme immunoassay.
Treatment
At the present stage of the development of medicine, there is no medicine that can completely cure this disease. However, with the timely start of HIV treatment, it is possible to postpone for a long time the moment of the transition of the immunodeficiency virus to the development of AIDS, and, consequently, prolong a more or less normal life of the patient.
Treatment regimens have already been developed that can significantly slow down the development of the disease, and since the infection proceeds in most cases for a long time, one can hope for the creation of effective therapeutic agents during this time.