Is there any such thing as a less than lethal dose of HIV virus, or is any small dose lethal eventually?

Question

FOr example, if a person gets, say, a single HIV virus into his blood stream, G-d forbid; will his immune system be able to overwhelm such a small infection? I don't know anything about medical science, so please use laymans terms. Thank you.

Answer 1

The term you're looking for is infectious dose. Determining that is a part of studying any disease. Food borne illnesses are a good example, they effect vary widely based on infectious doses. For HIV, there is little data to show what that number actually is, and even then, it's just a statistical average.

It would be very possible, even probably, that a single viral particle would not be able to take root in your body. The issue with this viruses is that it is able to replicate copies of themselves within a T cell. So if one virus got into one T cell, it could easily become 10,000.

Answer 2

Contact with an infected person's body fluids, either throught the gentials (sex) or the blood (tranfusion or needlestick injury) can cause infection with HIV even if just one time. HIV stands for 'human immunodeficiency virus' and can cause AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome).

So basically what happens is that the virus breaks into some cells from the person's immune system, replicates itself and then bursts out. Eventually if the infection goes on, it wrecks the immune system so bad that the person cannot fight off simple infections and dies from these.

In theory a single HIV virus could kill someone eventually given the right conditions. But noone is likely just to get one of them at a time, they're so small that an infected person will pass on millions in a small amount of fluid.

Answer 3

It depends on a lot of factors. Sometimes people stuck with needles from infected HIV patients don't get AIDS. There is no such thing as a lethal AIDS dose. It's not like a medication. There are a lot of factors in your body that affect it. The seroconversion rate for AIDS is relatively low. Meaning if you got stuck with an HIV infected needle, the chance you would develop HIV is not as high as you would think. Not everyone exposed to AIDS gets it.

Answer 4

When you get the HIV in your blood stream, in layman's terms, what it does is tells your helper T cells to take a vacation that it will do the job of those cells instead. In other words, it turns them off. It is actually a retrovirus. The helper T cells are cells that are supposed to recognize viruses when they show up in your system and then dispatch the white cells that will fight them.

Without the aforementioned helper T cells to recognize antigens (viruses, etc.) in your system, your body steadily decreases its ability to fight off disease.

If caught quickly enough, the retrovirus can be eliminated from your system, but it is as yet unreliable and once you are full-blown HIV, it is highly probably that you will be HIV positive until your death.

Note that HIV nor AIDS has ever been documented as the cause of death of an HIV/AIDS patient.

When you die, it won't be because of the HIV/AIDS, it will be because of what is known as an opportunistic disease that you were unable to fight because your helper T cells thought someone else (the HIV cell) was doing its job. On the other hand it could very well be for some other unrelated cause.

HIV/AIDS is no longer a guaranteed death sentence. Poet and author, Gregg Rowe of Montreal has been living with HIV for over 20 years and is quite possibly one of the oldest (known) living AIDS patients. Drug cocktails and clean living can help prevent the negative effects of opportunistic infections. Antiretroviral medications (Drug cocktails) can reduce both mortality (death) and morbidity (illness).

Answer 5

With modern technology if a person is exposed to it and they immediately take antiviral drugs chances are they won't get it. This technique is used on babies from HIV+ moms so they don't get HIV.

The problem is that HIV attacks our immune system, so the better immune system you have, the quicker it can spread. Luckily, it is very hard to get it into our bloodstream. One of the reasons it has spread so far in Africa is because people usually have more than one long-term sexual partner because they work far away from where they live, so they have one in each town. The more times you have sex with someone who may have it, the better chance you have to getting it.

Also, if you have another STD you have a better chance of getting HIV because you have open sores.

Answer 6

No, a single virus/bacterium or any micro-organism is too weak to do anything. Their strength lies in their quantity and the weakness of the persons immunity.

Answer 7

I saw a concrete terrace overlooking the river downtown, small trees still lit for the holidays. I saw the wide, unforgiving strip of black velvet sprinkled with diamonds and slow-moving sheets of jagged glass. Good poem.

Answer 8

any is lethal