Five Common Myths About AIDS

Since its discovery in 1981, AIDS has infected 76 million people worldwide and killed 35 million. It has become a major public health and social problem. In 38 years of exploration, people are also overcoming misconceptions about AIDS.

A misunderstanding:

AIDS causes immediate onset and death

The incubation period from infection with HIV to onset and death of AIDS is usually about 10 years.

During the incubation period, patients do not experience any clinical discomfort and they can live or work without any symptoms. It should be noted that they now have the conditions to transmit the virus, its blood, semen, milk and viscera contain AIDS virus, infectious — although from the appearance, these people and normal people have no difference. Why is this happening?

Because humans are naturally immune, when attacked by bacteria or viruses, as long as the immune function is normal, it can heal itself. It is the body’s immune cells, called T4 lymphocytes, that HIV attacks. In a seemingly quiet incubation period, the wily HIV copies itself frantically in cells, until its numbers are far beyond the reach of the human immune system, eventually causing the body to become unable to fight various diseases.

Once in the disease stage, even a common bacterial infection is enough to make the body’s immune system very weak

Pick up

Close to collapse. The full medical name for AIDS is “acquired Immune deficiency syndrome,”

In other words, HIV attacks our immune system, not the body itself. In fact, according to autopsy results, about 90 percent of AIDS patients eventually die of other diseases, such as pneumonia

Etc.

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Myth 2:

AIDS is a “super cancer” with a high death rate.

In recent years, research has achieved a major breakthrough in the field of AIDS treatment, 30 many kinds of effective antiviral drugs already on the market, both at home and abroad adopt a called “cocktail” therapy, successful control of the HIV/AIDS, HIV/AIDS from a high mortality rate of the “super cancer” turned into a chronic disease like high blood pressure, diabetes,

AIDS patients can remain in good health for 10 or even 20 years

.

The so-called haart, or highly active antiretroviral combination therapy, was developed by Chinese-American scientists at the Allen Diamond AIDS Center in New York

build

The professor suggested it. In 1995, he was invited to publish a review in the New England Journal of Medicine, in which he proposed “attacking AIDS earlier and harder”, or ART therapy, which the media interpreted as a “cocktail”, a treatment in which patients take a combination of antiviral drugs to treat AIDS from the earliest days of the virus’s discovery.

In simple terms, each single medicines for HIV has a strong inhibitory effect, but due to the AIDS virus is very easy to mutation may be easier for a drug resistance, so at the same time a variety of drugs can significantly reduce the incidence of drug resistance of virus (for a drug resistant viruses could be another drug suppression).

Combination drugs include: nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors: NRTIs; Non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors: NNRTIs; Protease inhibitors: PIs; Fusion inhibitor: FIs. Ho was named Time magazine’s person of the Year in 1996, beating out Bill Clinton, Mother Teresa and Bill Gates.

In 2015, the World Health Organization published new guidelines for HIV treatment, advocating early ART treatment for all people living with HIV. ART enables AIDS patients and HIV carriers to live the same life as normal people and coexist with HIV.

Myth 3:

HIV infected

Can’t be like

People fall in love and get married

AIDS patients before marriage to let partners know that they are infected with the virus, if the couple, only one of the AIDS patients, and the patient is male, to prepare for pregnancy, the safest method is semen processing (” semen washing “), artificial insemination; If the patient is a woman, a healthy baby can be born if the infected partner continues to take antiviral drugs under the “cocktail” and the uninfected partner takes daily pre-exposure prophylaxis.

In one part of the country, 35 couples with AIDS got married and gave birth to 24 babies. As a result of the effective measures taken, none of these newborns became infected with AIDS.

At present, China’s AIDS prevention and treatment policy of “four free and one care” to provide free testing services, HIV positive test results of people, specialized institutions and hospitals to provide free antiviral treatment and mother-to-child blocking.

Myth 4:

To be infected with HIV is to be infected with AIDS

How to avoid HIV infection after high-risk sexual behavior or HIV occupational exposure?

AIDS blocking drugs can be taken, and the earlier they are taken, the better

The success rate of blocking drugs is 99 percent within two hours, and should not exceed 72 hours at the latest. According to the HIV prevention recommended by the latest treatment guidelines, the combination of three drugs is the first choice, and the specific choice is made by doctors according to individual drug resistance, liver and kidney function, etc.

Many people infected with HIV were able to save themselves and their families from death by taking AIDS blocking drugs in time.

Myth 5:

Gene-edited babies can prevent AIDS

On November 26, 2018, a day before the second International Human Genome Editing Summit, He jiankui announced that a pair of gene-edited babies named Lulu and Nana were born in China in November of that year. The twins had a gene modified so that they were naturally resistant to AIDS when they were born. He used assisted reproductive technology to fertilize human embryos in vitro and then used CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing to edit the CCR5 gene in the fertilized egg.

In fact, many universities and research institutes at home and abroad can do this kind of experiment. But it is forbidden to reimplant embryos into babies.

After all, it took millions of years for the human genome to evolve into what it is now. Human intervention will pollute the gene pool, which is very dangerous. Moreover, HIV is highly variable. It is impossible to predict whether a CCR5 modified baby will become infected with the mutated virus

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At present, the treatment of AIDS patients has taken a big step from passive treatment of severe complications after infection to long-term control of the infected patients in asymptomatic period. The whole society should keep enough patience for this, and perhaps the real answer is not far away.