HIV/AIDS Treatment

Devin Banner
3/29/16

I remember a time during Junior High and hearing about the HIV / AIDS
epidemic ever since then Ive always had an interest in this particular illness and the
advances in medicine towards treatment for this terrible disease. Through my
research, I found an interesting drop off in HIV/AIDS related articles. I find the most
articles and publications being released around 90s and early 2000s, which Im sure
was during the whole HIV/AIDS hysteria. Currently the world is also pretty
preoccupied with the Ebola epidemic thats occurring.
Just a quick recap, HIV/AIDS stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus
infection and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. HIV is mainly contracted
through unprotected sex, blood transfusions with an infected person, hypodermic
needle sharing, as well as mother to child during birth and breastfeeding. HIV has
three stages of infection: acute infection, clinical latency, and AIDS. Its a disease
that at first contracting it, a person may not notice any symptoms or may experience a
brief period of flu like symptoms. Typically, this is followed by a prolonged period
with no symptoms. As the infection progresses, it interferes more with the immune
system, increasing the risk of common infections as well as other uncommon
infections and tumors that rarely affect people who have working immune systems.
These late symptoms of infection are referred to as AIDS.
From what my research is showing me, there are no types of a cure yet, but
there are a lot of reliable methods of suppressing the disease and being able to live an
almost normal life. Without any treatments, the lifespan of a person with HIV/AIDS

is 11 years. I have also noticed that there is a lot of focus of prevention rather than
curing the illness, well until the cure has been discovered.
There have been many new methods of prevention like; topical, oral, and
vaginal antimicrobial rings. One thing that seems to be another issue is testing these
treatments. In testing the HIV vaginal ring in Africa, they are having a difficult time
with testing the younger crowd, which is the highest account for HIV/AIDS cases.
The main reasons are due to the inconsistency and disinterest in testing, especially
when they find out they may be given the placebo treatment. As well, the importance
of HIV prevention is not as big of a priority as pregnancy prevention in Africa. The
conclusion of this article was to begin designing a product that could both prevent
pregnancy and HIV in order to create more appeal in places where HIV is very
common.
On the opposite side of prevention, treating people with this disease was
another topic of an article I found. The main point of this one was to provide medical
treatment for everyone with the disease and people who have the possibility of
contracting the disease instead of just exclusively treating people long into the
symptoms. Eventually they want to create an oral you would be able to take to
protect one from it like one would take for birth control.
Overall, my findings were all very interesting to read and very enlightening. I
found it peculiar that the main focus when it came to HIV/AIDS was medicine that

was geared more towards prevention and symptom treatment rather then an overall
cure.

Work Cited
Carl Engelking, Discover Magazine, Rapid Treatments Clears Second Baby of HIV,
March 6, 2014,
Laura Beil, Science News, Vol. 188 No. 10 Pg. 14, Daily Drug Shown Effective in
Preventing HIV Infections, October 27, 2015,
Stephanie Nebehay, Scientific American, World Health Org Calls for Early Treatment
for Everyone with HIV, September 30, 2015,