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"What is HIV? HIV means &amp;#039;human immunodeficiency virus&amp;#039;. This is the virus that causes AIDS. HIV first emerged as a threat to humanity in the early 1980s. It spread so fast that initially there were fears that it might wipe us all out.  Happily, there now seems no danger of that. But regrettably, many people haven&amp;#039;t realised that this virus still remains a threat to much of the population.  Look at the latest national statistics.  In the UK, the number of people who are living with HIV has doubled in the last decade. Well over 100,000 people living in Britain have the HIV virus. Many of them do not know it \u2013 about one in five of them (which means over 20,000 people) is undiagnosed. A third of the British people who are living with HIV are women \u2013 which dispels the notion that &amp;#039;only men get it&amp;#039;. Each year in the UK, almost 7,000 people are diagnosed as having HIV. While about 55 per cent of them are gay males, about 45 per cent are &amp;#039;straight&amp;#039; men and women. Incidentally, gay women are no more likely than straight women to get HIV.  The worldwide situation Currently, the worldwide situation is this.    About 35 million people have HIV.  Almost half of these are women (who mostly got the virus from vaginal intercourse).  Around three million children have the virus. Each year, about 2.3 million people catch HIV (good news:this figure has gone down slightly).  In some countries, particularly those located in Sub-Saharan Africa, the HIV rates are very high. For instance, in the Republic of South Africa it&amp;#039;s estimated that about 11 per cent of the population is HIV-positive.  Therefore, you should bear in mind that having sex with a new partner in certain areas of the globe could be very dangerous.  Please note that there are now known to be two types of HIV \u2013 called HIV-1 and HIV-2. The latter one is more common is some parts of the world, notably West Africa.  What are the common myths about HIV? Many people believe the following stories that have become commonplace during the 30 years since HIV first emerged.  &amp;#039;You can tell if someone is HIV-positive by looking at them&amp;#039;. This is nonsense. The great majority of people with HIV look perfectly normal.  &amp;#039;You can&amp;#039;t get HIV from straight sex&amp;#039;. This isn&amp;#039;t true. Worldwide, vaginal intercourse is now the most common way of acquiring the virus.  &amp;#039;Only gay men get HIV&amp;#039;. This is also untrue. As you can see from the figures above, large numbers of heterosexual men and women get it.  How does HIV infect people? There are four main ways in which it can enter the body.   During sex. Rectal intercourse is a very &amp;#039;efficient&amp;#039; way of transmitting the virus from one person to another. But nowadays, the majority of infections worldwide are caused by vaginal intercourse with an infected person. Through sharing injection needles. Intravenous drug users are at particular risk, if they use needles that have already been used by someone else and which therefore may be contaminated with the virus. From infected blood products. In some parts of the world blood intended for transfusion is still not tested for HIV. However, this is NOT the case in the UK.   Though infection of a baby by its mother.  A tiny number of cases occur for other reasons, for instance as a result of organ donation or sperm donation from a person who is HIV-positive, though these occurrences are very unlikely in the UK. How does HIV attack the human body? HIV cannot live on its own in the environment. So, in order to survive, the virus has to attack other living cells and use their metabolism to make copies of itself.  Unfortunately, HIV attacks some of the human cells that are vital to a healthy immune system, including the white blood cells known as T-helper cells or CD4 cells.  At the start of HIV infection \u2013 the primary infection \u2013 there are two possible outcomes. You can either have a short, flu-like illness that occurs one to six weeks after infection, or you can have a so-called &amp;#039;dumb&amp;#039; infection, with no symptoms at all. However, even if you don&amp;#039;t have any symptoms, you can still infect other people. Six to 12 weeks after the infection, the white blood cells have produced so many antibodies against HIV that they can be measured by a blood test. If you have HIV antibodies in your blood, you are now HIV-positive (HIV+).  An infected person will probably feel well for a long time. But the infection is still active inside the body and the virus, which can infect and destroy new blood cells, is constantly being produced.  The number of T-helper cells in the blood will slowly be reduced and when, after a number of years, the immune system has been weakened, the infected person will start showing symptoms of AIDS. What is AIDS? AIDS means &amp;#039;acquired immune deficiency syndrome&amp;#039;.  It&amp;#039;s a condition that sets in when the HIV virus has killed so many T-helper cells that the immune system is no longer able to recognise and react to attacks from everyday infections.  HIV may also attack the nervous system, possibly causing dementia. And it may affect the skin, on which small tumours develop. This condition is known as Kaposi&amp;#039;s sarcoma. A number of different symptoms can occur in people who have AIDS:  fatigue inexplicable weight loss repeated bronchial and skin infections that do not react to normal treatment fever  swollen lymph nodes diarrhoea night sweats outbreaks of previous infections that have remained dormant (herpes, toxoplasmosis, shingles and other conditions) so-called &amp;#039;opportunistic infections&amp;#039; \u2013 serious infections by micro-organisms of the type normally prevented by the immune system. These in turn could lead to a number of related illnesses, such as cancer or dementia. Tuberculosis may also occur.  In the end, the disease can become so serious that the infected patient dies. However these days, because of modern treatment many people survive.  condom blood.   Who is particularly at risk? It&amp;#039;s common for HIV-campaigners to say that &amp;#039;we are all at risk&amp;#039;.  Technically, this is so. But in reality, there are many factors that affect your level of risk. For instance, if you live in a part of the world where HIV is still rare and only have sex with your spouse \u2013 you&amp;#039;re not at all likely to get it. In the UK, people who are at &amp;#039;above-average&amp;#039; levels of risk include the following.  Heterosexual men and women who do not practise safe sex, especially if their partners originate from areas of the world where HIV is widespread \u2013 Africa (south of the Sahara Desert), parts of Asia and a few of the Caribbean Islands (notably Haiti, Trinidad, Jamaica and the Bahamas, where HIV rates have fallen but are still above 1.5 per cent). Homosexual and bisexual men, who go in for anal sex with many different partners and who do not practise safe sex. Women who have unprotected sex with many different partners, especially if these include bisexual men or intravenous drug users.  &amp;#039;Straight&amp;#039; men who have unprotected sex with many different partners. Prostitutes who don&amp;#039;t practise safe sex. Also at risk are their customers and these customers&amp;#039; other sexual partners.   Drug addicts who share needles. Hospital workers whose work involves real risk of pricking or cutting themselves with infected instruments or needles. Babies of an HIV-infected mother.  People who have had many blood transfusions overseas or who were treated with blood products before 1985.  How do you avoid infection?   Use a condom. This is not a guaranteed method of avoiding infection, but using a condom reduces the risk considerably. It must be worn all the way through sex. Avoid using recreational drugs that are injected with a syringe. Do not share syringes or needles with others. Avoid blood transfusions in certain countries, where they may not test the blood for HIV.  In 2015, it was suggested that taking a drug called Truvada could reduce the risk of getting HIV by 86 per cent, but much more research needs to be done on this. I might be infected \u2013 what should I do? If you have been exposed to infection, you should contact a doctor as soon as possible for advice, testing and treatment.  In the UK, the best place to go is a genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinic because they&amp;#039;re used to dealing with possible HIV cases. Also, their technical facilities are very good indeed. Traditional HIV tests don&amp;#039;t become positive until about three months after exposure to infection. But newer tests are now coming in, and these can provide an earlier diagnosis (see below).  If you know or suspect that your partner is HIV-positive or if you have been exposed to infection by accident \u2013 for instance through pricking yourself with a contaminated needle \u2013 treatment will be started to prevent an actual HIV infection. To be effective, it must commence within 72 hours of exposure. The treatment may have some unpleasant side-effects, so before going ahead the real risk of infection should be estimated.  This decision is up to you and your local HIV consultant. How do I get tested? If you&amp;#039;re going to have an HIV test: you should talk to a doctor or counsellor first, in order to discuss the possible implications of the result.  Under the NHS, an HIV test at a GUM clinic is free of charge and confidential.  Also, you can go to medical charities, like the Terrence Higgins Trust. And you can have a free HIV test arranged by your GP, but this will appear on your medical records for the rest of your life.  Some people go for private HIV tests at one of the many commercial clinics that advertise their services in London and other large cities.  Currently, the routine test will cost you between \u00A360 and \u00A3130. The clinic shouldn&amp;#039;t tell anyone else the result unless you authorise them to.  &amp;#039;Do-It-Yourself&amp;#039; HIV tests are now legal in the UK, but there are doubts about them because (according to the American FDA), they have a high rate of &amp;#039;false negatives.&amp;#039; Also, you really need to have an expert to interpret the test findings.  You might encounter circumstances where HIV testing is obligatory. For instance, when people want to take out a large insurance policy, it is quite common for the company to ask for a preliminary HIV test.  Also, you&amp;#039;re required to have a test if you want to do any of the following:  become a blood donor donate some of your organs for transplantation use your sperm for artificial insemination adopt a child contribute an egg for transplantation.  Testing for HIV Please note that tests don&amp;#039;t become positive until about four weeks after exposure. So there&amp;#039;s no point in asking for one on the morning after.  Generally, the test you&amp;#039;ll have is done on the blood. The sample is sent to the lab, and the result is available within a few days (sometimes the same day).  And it&amp;#039;s also possible to have practically instant tests (known as &amp;#039;point of care&amp;#039; tests), which are done &amp;#039;while you wait.&amp;#039;  They&amp;#039;re carried out either on your saliva, or on a drop of blood taken by a finger-prick. But if the &amp;#039;point of care&amp;#039; test is positive, then you should have a full blood test to confirm that you really do have HIV.  If it turns out that you&amp;#039;re HIV-positive, then you&amp;#039;ll need further tests to find out how far the infection has progressed. Treatment of HIV If you do have HIV, you should have expert treatment from a specialist. Please don&amp;#039;t be persuaded by alternative &amp;#039;cures&amp;#039;.   In the first years of the HIV epidemic, back in the early 1980s, there was no specific treatment. And many people died very quickly of AIDS.  But in the late 1980s, it was discovered that treatment with virus-fighting drugs called anti-retrovirals could slow the onset of the disease. The first and most well-known of these drugs was zidovudine (AZT). Unfortunately, it had many side-effects, and very often the HIV virus became resistant to it.  Happily, in the 1990s, other drugs from the same group as AZT (called &amp;#039;reverse transcriptase inhibitors&amp;#039;) became available. Shortly after that, several other classes of anti-virals were discovered, notably the protease inhibitors.  These days, people who have HIV, and whose CD4 cell count has dropped to dangerous levels, are treated with a combination of different groups of drugs \u2013 mainly as tablets or capsules.  These combinations reduce the chance of resistance occurring, and greatly increase the prospects of long life.  This combined treatment is generally known by the name HAART, which stands for highly active antiretroviral therapy.  All of the drugs which are used in HAART can have side-effects. But they do give you a really worthwhile lease of life.  As a result of HAART, there has been a very sharp decline in AIDS deaths in the UK.  New and more efficient treatments to fight HIV and reduce the content of virus in the blood are being developed all the time.  In addition to anti-virus treatment, you will almost certainly need some of the following at times:  Specific treatment of infections occurring as a result of HIV; please note that these can include tuberculosis. Vaccination against illnesses such as flu, pneumonia, and infectious hepatitis.  Therapy for the symptoms connected with HIV infection and AIDS, for instance treatment of nausea and loss of appetite.   You will probably need to take anti-HIV therapy throughout your life. Please don&amp;#039;t miss any doses. Fortunately, these days you should have what was once thought impossible: a good life expectancy.  What can I do for myself? If you do not have anyone to talk to about the situation, you might like to visit your GP, a counsellor with relevant experience or a psychotherapist. You should discuss your worries and the depression, which often follows the discovery that you are HIV-positive. Your partner, if you have one, may well need counselling too.  You should be treated for all infections and illnesses that result from the HIV virus. If these are serious, you will have to go to hospital. You should contact AIDS and HIV support groups because these organisations can be helpful. Make sure you eat a varied and healthy diet. Avoid smoking and excessive drinking. Get adequate exercise.  Possible deterioration Eventually, serious illnesses may develop as a result of HIV infection.  Commonly, these include infections that are normally prevented by the immune system.  These inlude:  tuberculosis pneumonia, caused by the germ Pneumocystis carinii toxoplasmosis infection in the brain reactivation of the germ cytomegalovirus infections involving the fungus Candida albicans and also other fungal diseases cancer, especially skin cancer, and cancer in the lymph nodes meningitis and encephalopathy, a brain disease that may cause dementia.  Death may sometimes occur as a result of these illnesses. But at the present time, large numbers of HIV-positive patients are managing to avoid those complications and to remain perfectly well. Future prospects AIDS is not yet curable.  However, many of the illnesses resulting from the condition can be treated. Generally, between 5 and 20 years pass from the time of infection until AIDS actually develops. Previously, those infected only lived for a couple of years after developing AIDS.  Fortunately, with the new types of treatment available, the survival rate has greatly improved. There are patients alive today who caught the infection over 30 years ago. So the outlook is much better than it used to be. Other people also read: Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs): you&amp;#039;ll find a number of conditions. Genital warts: who is at risk?  Genital herpes: how do you get medical help?  Based on a text by Dr Flemming Andersen, Dr Court Pedersen, professor and consultant  Last updated 01.04.2015 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/conditions/sexual-health/a2205/hiv-and-aids/>