For over 15 years the global scientific and medical community has struggled in the grip of its most recent and infamous deadly foe: the disease commonly known as AIDS, or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. During this time incredible scientific and medical weight has been brought to bear against this terrible disease, yet not since President Nixon’s "War on Cancer" have so much planted optimism and resources borne such bitter fruits of impotence and futility to patients stricken with this disease and the people charged with their care. Despite the unprecedented bloom of scientific knowledge in the areas of virology and immunology and the rapid medical advances that have resulted from this concerted effort to fight this disease, there exists no cure or preventative vaccine.
The statistics describing the worldwide spread of HIV/AIDS are staggering. As of the beginning of 1998, 30.6 million people were living with HIV/AIDS, growing at a rate of approximately 16,000 infections each day. Worldwide, approximately 1% of all adults between ages 15 and 49 are HIV-infected, and the AIDS death toll has chimed 11.7 million times, with 2.3 million soundings in 1997 alone. What is perhaps the most disconcerting is the localization of the AIDS epidemic to poor, developing nations, such as those of sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia (see figure at right). This geographic and socioeconomic concentration of AIDS victims has great implications for scientists battling the disease, for these countries do not have the infrastructure to handle complicated and rigorous drug therapy regimens and their populations cannot afford the expensive drugs in current use today.
HIV and AIDS
AIDS is a deadly disease caused by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, or HIV. HIV was first isolated in the laboratory of Dr. Luc Montagnier from the lymph nodes of an AIDS patient. Infection of an individual by HIV eventually causes extreme immunosuppression marked by more frequent and serious recurring medical problems caused by opportunistic infections (the hallmarks of AIDS), and eventually, death. How HIV causes this decline in the function of the immune system is not well understood, but is related to the decrease in the number of helper T cells in the blood, cells important for mediating the immune system against these opportunistic pathogens and HIV itself.
HIV is a retrovirus, which means that an infectious particle (virion) contains its genome as RNA, and once inside a host cell, reverse transcribes its genetic material into DNA for integration into the host cell's own genome. Once integrated, viral proteins are then made by the host cell by its own cellular processes.
To learn more, read about The HIV Lifecycle.
Current HIV Therapies
The most successful current antiviral therapy used to treat HIV infection is the combination therapy, sometimes referred to as the triple therapy. This regimen of three drugs, usually two reverse transcriptase inhibitors and a protease inhibitor, has been responsible for the recent reports of "undetectable" viral loads in patients after 2-3 months of treatment. Unfortunately, HIV readily mutates to avoid the effects of the drugs, even when challenged with the combination. Thus, the triple therapy will greatly extend the lifetime of the HIV-infected patient, but eventually the drugs will become less and less effective and the patient will develop AIDS. Also, this drug therapy is extremely expensive and demands strict adherence to a rigorous treatment schedule. Because of these limitations, the more effective combination therapy is only used to treat a small minority of the world's HIV infections.
To learn more, read about AIDS Therapies.
HIV/AIDS Web Site Links
World Health Organization HIV/AIDS Surveillance - Monitors the spread of HIV throughout the world...get the latest statistics and epidemiological data.
UNAIDS - The United Nations global source of HIV/AIDS information.
HIV Sequence Database - HIV sequences and alignment, immunology database.
All the Virology on the World Wide Web - Compendium of WWW virology resources.
Yahoo HIV and AIDS - Yahoo-compiled resources for HIV/AIDS.
Project Inform - Information, inspiration, and advocacy for people living with AIDS.
JAMA HIV/AIDS - Journal of the American Medical Association HIV/AIDS peer-reviewed resources.
Johns Hopkins AIDS Service - News, treatment, prevention, drug research, etc.
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