What Is HIV?

The human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV, is a virus that attacks the bodys immune system.

Specifically, the virus infects people's CD4-sure (CD4+) T-adviser cells.

Those cells  sometimes known as CD4 cells, T-adviser cells, or T4 cells  are white blood cells that performance an important role in the immune system.

Over era, HIV can make contaminated CD4 cells, impairing the immune system's execution to protest off infections and diseases.

The adorable stage of an HIV infection is called acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, or AIDS.

AIDS is a simulation-threatening illness, and occurs subsequent to your immune system is very damaged.

AIDS is usually diagnosed gone your CD4 cells are deeply low or once you fabricate one or more opportunistic illnesses, such as pneumonia or tuberculosis, for that defense of an HIV infection and a compromised immune system.

HIV/AIDS Prevalence and Demographics

In the United States, there are approximately 50,000 calculation cases of HIV each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The CDC subsidiary estimates that some 1.2 million Americans were enliven taking into consideration HIV in 2011, and more or less 14 percent of these people (168,000) didn't even know they were polluted.

The devastating virus doesn't put-on interchange groups of people equally. Of the estimated 47,500 unorthodox U.S. cases of HIV in 2010, approximately two-thirds of the newly dirty people were bisexual or gay men, according to CDC data.

Different races and ethnicities along with experience skewed HIV infection rates.

In 2010, African-Americans, whites, and Hispanic/Latinos accounted for 44, 31, and 21 percent of calculation HIV cases in the United States, respectively.


Despite augmented treatment options handy back the AIDS outbreak in the 1980s, people still die from the illness.

In 2012, AIDs caused the death of 13,712 people in the United States, bringing the unlimited AIDS death toll in the country to 658,507 people, according to the CDC.

HIV/AIDS Worldwide

Globally, HIV and AIDS are still a immense shackle, as soon as an estimated 2.1 million substitute cases of HIV and 35 million people enliven behind the virus in 2013, according to the CDC.

Today, people in sub-Saharan Africa bear the brunt of the current HIV epidemic, accounting for on 71 percent of people vivacious following HIV worldwide, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

What's more, just nearly 1 in 20 adults in sub-Saharan Africa have HIV.

Since the epidemic began decades ago, HIV has impure in the region of 78 million people, and about 39 million people as soon as AIDS have died, WHO remarks.

HIV Transmission and Prevention

Blood, semen, pre-seminal formless, rectal fluids, vaginal fluids, and breast milk can transmit HIV together in the middle of people.

For someone to profit HIV, however, dirty fluids must be injected directly into the bloodstream, or come in entre following damaged tissue (cuts) or the mucous membranes in the vagina, coming on of the penis, rectum, and mouth.

In the United States, HIV is mostly augment through sex  particularly anal and vaginal  subsequent to an mixed person. The sickness is along with transmitted through sharing impure needles and auxiliary trappings for intravenous drug use.

You can shorten your risk of getting HIV if you:

Never share needles
Use condoms correctly and consistently
Limit your number of sexual associates
Choose less dangerous sexual behaviors (oral sex instead of anal or vaginal sex, for instance)
Get checked and treated for add-on sexually transmitted diseases
A drug called pre-freshening prophylaxis, or PrEP, can greatly condense your risk of becoming polluted in imitation of HIV  by taking place to 92 percent, according to the CDC  if it's taken all day.

Another medication called appendage-freshening prophylaxis (PEP) can abbreviate your risk of becoming polluted once HIV if taken within three days of ventilation to the virus.

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