One of the most well-known diseases of our days is the acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS. This is a set of infections and symptoms that are resulted by a damaged immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, also known as HIV.

There are also some scientists who say that there are some other factors as well that contribute to the syndrome.The interesting thing about the acquired immune deficiency illness is that it has been medically defined long before people heard about HIV.

This illness reduces the efficiency of the immune system and the patients will become more susceptible to the opportunistic infections and tumors.

The infection can be got through the direct contact of mucus membrane or the bloodstream with bodily fluid containing the virus, like blood, vaginal fluid, semen, pre-seminal fluid and also breast milk.

At the moment the illness is considered to be pandemic. This kind of disease has been identified for the first time in 1981 and the worst thing is that although there are certain kinds of treatments that slow down and even arrest the acquired immune deficiency syndrome there is no actual vaccine or cure.

The anti-retroviral treatments reduce the mortality and morbidity of the illness, but although these are quite effective, they are expensive and they aren’t available in all of the countries.

Symptoms of AIDS

The majority of the symptoms of the acquired immune deficiency syndrome are those illnesses and diseases that don’t really occur in case of individuals with healthy immune systems. The majority of these conditions are caused by bacteria, virus, fungi, and parasites that normally are kept under control by the immune system.

Opportunistic infections are common among the people who have been infected by HIV and this infection affects almost all of the organs. Also the people with HIV-AIDS have increased chances of developing cancers, such as cervical cancer, Kaposi’s sarcoma, and also cancers of the immune system that are known as lymphomas.

There are also systemic symptoms such as fever, swollen glands, sweats, chills, weight loss and weakness.

Pulmonary infections rarely appear in case of people with healthy immune systems, but they are quite common among those infected with acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Before it could be effectively diagnosed and treated, it has been a common and immediate cause of death. Even in the developing countries, it is one of the first signs of AIDS in case of the untested individuals.

Tuberculosis is also known as TB and it is unique among the patients infected by HIV because it could be transmitted to the individuals with healthy immune systems through the respiratory route. It is easy to treat in case it is found in time and it can also be prevented through drug therapy. The problem is more serious in case of multi-drug resistance.

Although in the Western countries it is easy to treat the disease through antibiotics, it is not the case of the developing countries, where there are more cases of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.