The Human Immunodeficiency Virus (hiv)
HIV, HIV or Aids virus, the infectious agent determinant of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS.)
HIV is a retrovirus, a class of viruses whose genetic material is made of RNA, not DNA, like that of most organisms.
Initially, the HIV remains dormant or “sleeping” within lymphocytes. In some cases, after a time, often years, for reasons still not well determined, the virus activates or “wakes up” and starts destroying lymphocytes, a type of white blood cells, where it multiplies to death, with thereby weakening the body's defenses, then exposed to all sorts of invaders that may eventually cause death.
Alternatively, you can hide as does HPV, although in this case the virus must first convert its RNA into DNA. And unlike the HPV and other retroviruses, HIV does not promote uncontrolled cell proliferation, ie does not cause tumors.
Currently, retroviral therapies can survive infection by HIV AIDS has become a chronic disease, although as in many other cases, only for those who can access these treatments.
The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) emerged in Africa in the early twentieth century, from chimpanzees, but HIV, for reasons still unknown, he waited until the 70's to take over and expand the human species in a way drastic.
Not until 1981 when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) U.S. publicly announced the new disease: the Human Immunodeficiency Syndrome, AIDS, was detected in patients suffering from all kinds of opportunistic infections such as pneumonia or Kaposi sarcoma (a cancer of infectious origin) that only appear when the immune system is strongly weakened.
Then began an unprecedented career that was to conclude in record time, the identification of the causative agent, HIV.
Between 1980 and 1984, Franoise Barr-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier were able to identify and isolate HIV-1, a finding that contributed to the rapid development of methods for virus detection and control of the spread of the pandemic.
Montagnier himself told in first person how events unfold in the book “On Men and viruses. The Race Against AIDS”, which also claimed the tricks of his U.S. counterpart Robert Gallo.
