The great HIV/AIDS thread

Post by metakron moved to cesspool due to failure to comply to the moderators instructions. So far he had three threads to come up with the argument to back up his claims and hasn't grasped the chance in any of them. Trolling will not be tolerated on this particular subject. AIDS denial is of such an irresponsible nature that I will not allow for its propaganda to spew freely. I'm quite happy if there would be a debate on the mechanisms of HIV and the link to AIDS.

You may well compare AIDS denial to holocause denial. I'm sure that for both cases there are internet sites that claim that neither is real. That is not going to get you of the hook of actually backing up this claims if you want to post them here. You may discuss the ethical aspects of AIDS denial here:
http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=1251381#post1251381



Metakron's post moved here:
http://sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=61071
 
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Thanks Spurious,
I have no idea what's going on here. I know nothing about Aids denial or any of the other things you refer to. I just wanted to know the difference, if there is one, between HIV and AIDS. I remember when AIDS was first discovered it wasn't referred to as HIV/AIDS. I just wondered why the change in name - THAT ALL!
Thanks for the reference. That answers my question.
John
 
The slash merely represents a division.
HIV/AIDS. A thread about HIV and AIDS

a dash would make it one word.

HIV-AIDS. a thread about HIV-AIDS.


Sorry for the confusion.
 
Effective AIDS Drug

http://www.physorg.com/news86960302.html

>> Clinical studies of the drug, called an integrase inhibitor, showed that, when combined with two existing drugs, it reduced the virus to undetectable levels in nearly 100 percent of HIV patients prescribed a drug regimen for the first time, The Los Angeles Times said Tuesday. It had a similar effect in 72 percent of salvage therapy patients, who take a mixture of existing medications aimed at stalling the virus until new drugs appear.

The drug essentially prevents the virus' DNA from integrating with a host's cells, inhibiting its ability to replicate itself.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration should approve it in mid-2007. Manufacturer Merck & Co. is making it available sooner to patients in desperate straits.

"They tested it on some people who were in deep, deep salvage therapy, and even those people did remarkably well," Dr. Steven Deeks, a University of California, San Francisco salvage therapy authority, told the Times. "It seems to be a truly phenomenal drug that ... is changing the whole way we think about the management of these patients." >>>

Now that is promising
 
Hi Spurious,
No confusion for me. I didn't even consider the difference between slash and hyphen. Thanks for the primer.
John
 
No I do not. I'm amazed at what you think convinces people. If it does work it's a sad commentary.
 
I've been browsing a bit through the HIV literature and found the following article in Nature Reviews Microbiology

4 January 2007
Is HIV-1 evolving to a less virulent form in humans?
During the rapid spread of HIV-1 in humans, the main (M) group of HIV-1 has evolved into ten distinct subtypes, undergone countless recombination events and diversified extensively. The impact of this extreme genetic diversity on the phenotype of HIV-1 has only recently become a research focus, but early findings indicate that the dominance of HIV-1 subtype C in the current epidemic might be related to the lower virulence of this subtype compared with other subtypes. Here, we explore whether HIV-1 has reached peak virulence or has already started the slow path to attenuation.

HIV-1 was introduced into the human population just 60–80 years ago5 but an estimated 40 million individuals are currently infected with the virus The spread and expansion of HIV-1 across Africa and throughout the world has been accompanied by one of the most rapid evolutionary rates described for a human pathogen6, aside from hepatitis C virus. HIV-1 remains one of the most lethal pathogens (100% mortality) that currently infects humans, whereas infection by other human viruses that are often more feared, such as Ebola, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), influenza H5NI and Lassa Fever, can have a mortality rate of <50% (Refs 7–9).

Is there attenuation?

With the exceptions of anecdotes, a few case reports and one published study on a large cohort, there is no evidence that HIV-1 virulence has either increased or decreased during the past 20–30 years of the pandemic. One of the main obstacles in comparing disease progression in the mid-1980s with the current day epidemic in the developed world is the significant medical advancements that have been made. In the developing world, until recently, few if any cohorts have been analysed for disease progression. Finally, owing to increased awareness and education about AIDS, patients are now diagnosed earlier, sometimes during acute infection, whereas in the 1980s many patients did not present to a clinic until the onset of AIDS. As a result, there is often the impression that HIV-1 infections are less aggressive now than they were at the beginning of the pandemic.

Not all HIV subtypes are equal though

HIV-1 subtype C might be in a more advanced stage of attenuation than other HIV-1 subtypes53, 96, 144. If it is less virulent than other subtypes, subtype C infections might result in slower disease progression, longer periods of asymptomatic infection and more opportunities for transmission


But in conclusion there is no real evidence that HIV is getting less virulent.
 
100% mortality

That's not exactly true.
Although I don't know what the exact percentage would be. Probably pretty damned close to 100% but accuracy in this case, I think, would suggest to round down to 99% if any rounding should occur at all.
 
mod statement:
This thread has seen no action for almost a month. Members decided to rather discuss HIV rather somewhere else. Therefore I declare this thread unstickied.
 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6357287.stm

Scientists have shown what happens when an infection-fighting antibody attacks a gap in HIV's formidable defences.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases-led team say the work could aid HIV vaccine development.

They have published an atomic-level image in Nature showing the antibody, b12, attacking part of a protein on surface of the virus.

_42566405_antibody203220.jpg


"NIH researchers and their colleagues have revealed a gap in HIV's armour and have thereby opened a new avenue to meeting that challenge."

HIV rapidly evolves, but not all areas of the virus do so. Until now it was difficult to say which areas can rapidly evolve and which areas cannot. Areas that are crucial for entering the cell could be conserved. Now these researchers have shown a prediction of the area that could be used for vaccine research.
 
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070212/full/070212-10.html

Researchers have developed a better understanding of how the HIV virus enters the female body during sex.

method

Because the vagina's skin is the first barrier to the HIV virus, Florian Hladik, who is also at the University of Washington decided to look at vaginal skin removed during surgery. He used a chemical treatment to separate the outermost layer of vaginal skin from the underlying tissue. His team then exposed this layer to HIV viruses that had been tagged with a glowing dye. The team could then see which cells the viruses had infected.

results

Within two hours, HIV had attacked specialized immune cells called CD4+ T cells, and infected almost half of them. At the same time, the virus also infected other cells in the immune system called Langerhans cells, but it's not clear exactly how the virus does this.

"This is significant, because there's a lot of debate about what the initial targets of HIV infection are in the vagina," says Veazey.
 
And when the researcher who "discovered" HIV lied about a lot of things, it somehow has no bearing on all this. Amazing.
 
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