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In the absence of any therapy, if patients are individuals acquire HIV (perhaps 10 years later and no medications or no diagnosis) they may end up with a syndrome known as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. In this circumstance, these are individuals who are known to have infection with HIV, but their immunity has been destroyed over the intervening years to the point where they're subject to infections with very uncommon and weak diseases, bacteria, parasites, and other viruses.
In the absence of any therapy, if patients are individuals acquire HIV (perhaps 10 years later and no medications or no diagnosis) they may end up with a syndrome known as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. In this circumstance, these are individuals who are known to have infection with HIV, but their immunity has been destroyed over the intervening years to the point where they're subject to infections with very uncommon and weak diseases, bacteria, parasites, and other viruses.
HIV is an acronym that stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. These are viruses that cause the disease known as HIV, as well as (in the untreated state, if patients have this disease) eventually they may end up with a syndrome known as AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome.) In the absence of any therapy, if patients or individuals acquire HIV, perhaps 10 years later and no medications or no diagnosis, they may end up with a syndrome known as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. In this circumstance, these are individuals who are known to have infection with HIV, but their immunity has been destroyed over the intervening years to the point where they're subject to infections with very uncommon and weak diseases, bacteria, parasites and other viruses.
By the end of 2014, it was estimated that there were 1.2 million individuals living with HIV infection in the United States. It's also estimated that about 50,000-55,000 new cases of HIV occur in the United States each year. Worldwide, there are an estimated 35-37 million individuals with HIV. The unfortunate part dealing with the history of this epidemic is that there are now at least 35 million people who have died from this viral illness - similar to the magnitude of death and destruction caused by the 1918 flu epidemic and the bubonic plague in the medieval times.
HIV and tuberculosis co-infection is very common in Sub-Saharan Africa. On the other hand, when I opened the first clinic for HIV in Saigon (or Ho Chi Minh City), we had a lot of interesting illnesses that we don't encounter here in the United States like penicilliosis, which is a fungal infection that behaves like histoplasmosis - a fungus we do have here in the United States and can co-infect people with HIV - particularly in the Midwest.
I think the first step is diagnosis and as we talked about, this is performed by doing a blood test. These are available at virtually every hospital. Every physician can order this test on any individual. Then secondly: if you have HIV, there are a number of avenues which you can pursue. You may have a very knowledgeable primary care physician you want to stay with but I would recommend that at some point you see someone who's specializing in HIV care for the simple reason that the drugs are now so powerful that there also can be problems in implementing them and keeping them going, that at least a visit with a specialist in HIV care once would be important. The economics (if you will) of having an HIV infection may appear daunting, but anyone in the United States should be able to obtain drugs for the treatment of HIV. Those who have no work, no insurance, they can go to a local Ryan White clinic and obtain all of this help. These clinics are available in most big cities.
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