Medicrit – Medicare

Archive for October, 2010

There is a common fallacy that people usually believed in, it is that the HIV infection is a manifestation of AIDS, but the right thing is that AIDS only appears on the last stage of the infection. The first occurrence of this infection happened in Africa somewhere in the Caribbean Islands and the cases were first reported in United States of America in 1981 and later on reported to be an endemic disease. This kind of sexually transmitted disease spread so quickly and then later on becomes pandemic. The said cause of this infection is called retrovirus human T-cell lymphotopic virus or HTLV-3. The means of this transmission is through sexual activities, contaminated syringes, nipper, needles or razor, and blood transfusion. The direct contact with open wound, body fluids, semen and even vaginal discharges can also be a way of transmitting the infection. The period of transfusion can manifest within one to three months and the contagion of HIV virus to AIDS is said to be in range of less than 15 years.

The symptoms of this disease can be loss of weight, loss of appetite, rashes called macula-puplar, fever of unknown cause, consistent diarrhea, disseminated and localized tuberculosis,skin cancer called kaposi’s sarcoma, esopagael candidiasis, pheumocytis carini pneumonia, and gaunt apprehensive. There is also another kind of symptoms in the first stage of this disease called mental manifestations such as loss of concentration, loss of forgetfulness, loss of libido, psychomotor retardation, apathy and withdrawal.

The last stage can have manifestations like seizures, confusion, disorientation, coma and loss of memory. There are certain treatment that can be done like ELISA or Enzyme Immuno-Sorbent Assay for presumptive test and Western blot confirmatory examination.

Direct contact or transfer requires any sexual activity like the transfusion of body fluid of the infected person. The very important means of transmission is through blood transfusion that contains 1000 to 1000,000 viruses that comes from the infected person, and semen from the infected man that contains 10 to 50 viruses per millimeter. The viruses can be found in the cells of body fluids most especially in microphages. HIV can survive six hours outside the cell membrane and one and a half days if it is found inside the cell.There are some cases that a virus can be transmitted like sexual contact, placental infection in the uterus, milk from the mother, contaminated needles, synthetic insemination, organ transplantation and blood transfusion.

The easiest way to transfer the disease is through anal-receptive intercourse. Sex through vagina can transfer the virus from male to female and vice versa and the process can be more effective if there genital lesions in the vagina of the sexual people involved in the sex. Oral-genital sex can also be a rare means of transmitting the virus. HIV virus cannot be transmitted through casual contact like sharing household items or hugging and insect bites. Kissing cannot transfer the HIV virus since saliva contains only one virus per millimeter. In some countries that are already developed, blood transfusion is impossible because they have a blood testing to find out whether there is an HIV antibodies present in the blood, but there is always a thin possibility of risk.

The most effective way to prevent the infection is to have a monogamous relationship, preventing promiscuous sexual contact, sterilize the tools used in cutting operation like syringes, proper blood testing of the blood donors, disregarding oral, anal and vaginal sex especially ingestion of semen through oral sex and using condoms during sex. Having a regular STD check up at STD clinics to make it sure that you are not transmitted with the virus.