at what point does one stop being "HIV +", and start having AIDS?

Question

3 weeks ago a guy that i've loved since 1990 died from ks in his liver and stomach. we dated from 1990 to 1993. we never really reconnected until after he had contracted "the plague" as he called it. i miss him and am full of questions lately. plz excuse my ignorance. i'm trying to make sense outta all this.

Answer 1

A person can have HIV for a long time before it advances to AIDS. It really just depends on the person and how well their immune system is. Medically, AIDS develops when the T-cell count is less than 200 T-cells per micro liter of blood.

My uncle only had HIV for a little while (about 3 years) before it advanced to full blown AIDS. He died shortly after that. My family and his partner of many years were completely devastated. Dying of AIDS is a horrible way to die.

I'm sorry for your loss! Take care.

Answer 2

You would think. But here's the problem. The HIV virus has a very low infectious load. As low as 1 virus particle. So an attenuated (killed) virus vaccine with even one live virus in it would cause infection, not immunity, even if it did in theory, work. Which it wouldn't. For some reason B cells don't seem to form antibodies for the HIV virus. And cancer, being not a virus or a bacteria, but rather a result of the breakdown of DNA, usually due to environment, can never be vaccinated against. Some things that cause cancer, like HPV can be vaccinated against, (we've got that one, now, Whoo!) but cancer itself is usually eradicated by your own immune system's natural killer cells. We don't know why that sometimes fails. It's like saying since we have cars, we should be able to make them fly. HIV and cancer are in a whole different league than Polio. Oh, and tuberculosis (TB) and variola (Chicken Pox) are still around. They haven't been wiped out like Polio. Other stuff like typhoid, cholera, and leprosy are still active in many parts of the world. Just not in developed countries. So, the converse of the question is, if we can't get rid of cholera, which requires only clean drinking water to be eradicated from a population, what makes us think a cure for AIDS is overdue?

Answer 3

AIDS is a stage of HIV disease. HIV infection causes progressive damage to the immune system over time, sometimes very slowly, sometimes more rapidly.

AIDS is the stage at which a person with HIV's immune system is so damaged they are at high risk of developing "opportunistic diseases". This is a list of a couple of dozen particular infections and cancers such as pneumocystis pneumonia or invasive Kaposi's sarcoma that don't normally develop unless the T4 cell immunity is severely damaged.

AIDS is diagnosed either when one of these opportunistic diseases has happened, or when the T4 cell count is below 200.

The wikipedia article on AIDS is well written and accurate. It is quite long, but is worth a look if you are trying to get your head around this disease, as we all should.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS