How Is The Common Cold Like The Hiv Virus

Prevention Of Hiv Infection

At present, there is no effective HIV vaccine to prevent HIV infection or slow the progression of AIDS in people who are already infected. However, treating people who have HIV infection reduces the risk of their transmitting the infection to other people.

Transmission of HIV through its most common routessexual contact or sharing of needlesis almost completely preventable. However, the measures required for preventionsexual abstinence or consistent condom use Prevention Sexually transmitted diseases are infections that are typically, but not exclusively, passed from person to person through sexual contact. Sexually transmitted diseases may be caused… read more and access to clean needlesare sometimes personally or socially unpopular. Many people have difficulty changing their addictive or sexual behaviors, so they continue to put themselves at risk of HIV infection. Also, safe sex practices are not foolproof. For example, condoms can leak or break.

Aids Virus Not Transmitted Like Common Cold Flu Health Officials Dispel Misconceptions About Disease

One of the biggest misconceptions about AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome and HIV, human immunodeficiency virus, the virus which causes AIDS, is the belief that both the disease and the virus can be contracted in the same fashion as the common cold, say officials with the Oklahoma State Department of Health.

HIV is unusual in that it’s not spread the same way as most transmissible diseases like colds, influenza or the measles, health officials say. HIV is not transmitted through sneezing, coughing, eating or drinking from common utensils or by being around an infected person. People cannot get the disease from toilet seats or drinking fountains.

In fact, health officials stress, there have been no cases found in which HIV has been transmitted through casual – non-sexual – contact with a household member, relative, co-worker, friend or schoolmate. The only proven means of HIV transmission are: sexual intercourse with an infected person sharing of needles by infected intravenous drug users transmission from an infected mother to her baby during pregnancy, birth or breastfeeding and, less frequently, blood transfusion from an infected person. Another infrequent transmission method is exposure of a health-care worker to infected blood by a prick from a contaminated needle, or a similar incident.

Briefly, AIDS is a disease complex characterized by a collapse of the body’s natural immunity against disease.

This is why some people consider AIDS an indirect killer.

Approaches By Virus Life Cycle Stage

Viruses consist of a genome and sometimes a few enzymes stored in a capsule made of protein , and sometimes covered with a lipid layer . Viruses cannot reproduce on their own and instead propagate by subjugating a host cell to produce copies of themselves, thus producing the next generation.

Researchers working on such “rational drug design” strategies for developing antivirals have tried to attack viruses at every stage of their life cycles. Some species of mushrooms have been found to contain multiple antiviral chemicals with similar synergistic effects.Compounds isolated from fruiting bodies and filtrates of various mushrooms have broad-spectrum antiviral activities, but successful production and availability of such compounds as frontline antiviral is a long way away. Viral life cycles vary in their precise details depending on the type of virus, but they all share a general pattern:

Before cell entry

This stage of viral replication can be inhibited in two ways:

Uncoating inhibitor

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Also Check: Can You Have Hiv And Not Aids

Ways Hiv Cannot Be Spread

HIV is not spread by:

• Air or water
• Mosquitoes, ticks or other insects
• Saliva, tears, or sweat that is not mixed with the blood of a person with HIV
• Shaking hands hugging sharing toilets sharing dishes, silverware, or drinking glasses or engaging in closed-mouth or social kissing with a person with HIV
• Drinking fountains

Common Cold Viruses Originated In Camels Just Like Mers

Date:

German Center for Infection Research

Summary:

There are four globally endemic human coronaviruses which, together with the better known rhinoviruses, are responsible for causing common colds. Usually, infections with these viruses are harmless to humans. Researchers have now found the source of ‘HCoV-229E,’ one of the four common cold coronaviruses, to have originated in camels, just like the dreaded MERS virus.

There are four globally endemic human coronaviruses which, together with the better known rhinoviruses, are responsible for causing common colds. Usually, infections with these viruses are harmless to humans. DZIF Professor Christian Drosten, Institute of Virology at the University Hospital of Bonn, and his research team have now found the source of “HCoV-229E,” one of the four common cold coronaviruses — it also originates from camels, just like the dreaded MERS virus.

The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus was identified in humans for the first time in 2012. It causes severe respiratory tract infections that are often fatal. Dromedaries were confirmed to be its animal source some time ago.

Common cold virus evolution could provide a scenario for MERS emergence

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Treatment Options For Antiviral Resistant Pathogens

If a virus is not fully wiped out during a regimen of antivirals, treatment creates a bottleneck in the viral population that selects for resistance, and there is a chance that a resistant strain may repopulate the host. Viral treatment mechanisms must therefore account for the selection of resistant viruses.

The most commonly used method for treating resistant viruses is combination therapy, which uses multiple antivirals in one treatment regimen. This is thought to decrease the likelihood that one mutation could cause antiviral resistance, as the antivirals in the cocktail target different stages of the viral life cycle. This is frequently used in retroviruses like HIV, but a number of studies have demonstrated its effectiveness against influenza A, as well. Viruses can also be screened for resistance to drugs before treatment is started. This minimizes exposure to unnecessary antivirals and ensures that an effective medication is being used. This may improve patient outcomes and could help detect new resistance mutations during routine scanning for known mutants. However, this has not been consistently implemented in treatment facilities at this time.

Viral Types And Strains

Vaccines target a specific disease-causing pathogen, such as a virus. One of the difficulties in developing a vaccine for the common cold is there are at least 200 different viruses that can cause cold symptoms, including adenoviruses, coronaviruses, parainfluenza, and rhinoviruses.

Rhinoviruses are to blame for up to 50% of all common colds. That seems like a big enough target to focus on. But of these rhinoviruses, there are more than 150 strains circulating at any one time.

Due to the limitations of current technologies, there is no way for one vaccine to protect against all possible types and strains of the viruses that cause the common cold.

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Who Is Required To Report

• Health care practitioners are required to report disease to the Minnesota Department of Health under Minnesota state law.
• Unless previously reported, every licensed health care provider who provides care to any patient who has, is suspected of having, or has died from a reportable disease is required to report.

Symptoms And Signs Of Common Cold

After an incubation period of 24 to 72 hours, cold symptoms begin with a scratchy or sore throat, followed by sneezing, rhinorrhea, nasal obstruction, and malaise. Temperature is usually normal, particularly when the pathogen is a rhinovirus or coronavirus. Nasal secretions are watery and profuse during the first days but then become more mucoid and purulent. Mucopurulent secretions do not indicate a bacterial superinfection. Cough is usually mild but often lasts into the 2nd week. Most symptoms due to uncomplicated colds resolve within 10 days.

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What Are The Signs And Symptoms Of Aids

Having an infection with the HIV virus does not automatically mean that the patient has AIDS. As the HIV virus infects more and more CD4 cells and makes more copies of itself, the patients immune system gets overwhelmed and begins to falter. When the immune system breaks down due to HIV infection, opportunistic infections like fungal infections, pneumonias, and cancers can occur. When this level of HIV infection occurs, it is called AIDS .

Some of the signs and symptoms of progression of HIV to AIDS are:

Hepatitis B Virus And Hepatitis C Virus

Both HBV and HCV cause viral hepatitis, a type of liver infection. Other viruses can also cause hepatitis , but only HBV and HCV can cause the long-term infections that increase a persons chance of liver cancer. In the United States, less than half of liver cancers are linked to HBV or HCV infection. But this number is much higher in some other countries, where both viral hepatitis and liver cancer are much more common. Some research also suggests that long-term HCV infection might be linked with some other cancers, such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

HBV and HCV are spread from person to person in much the same way as HIV through sharing needles , unprotected sex, or childbirth. They can also be passed on through blood transfusions, but this is rare in the United States because donated blood is tested for these viruses.

Of the 2 viruses, infection with HBV is more likely to cause symptoms, such as a flu-like illness and jaundice . Most adults recover completely from HBV infection within a few months. Only a very small portion of adults go on to have chronic HBV infections, but this risk is higher in young children. People with chronic HBV infections have a higher risk for liver cancer.

For more information, see Liver Cancer.

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Similarities Between Both Viruses

Even though it may seem that these two viruses induced diseases are not very similar among them, they have some important points in common:

Fear in the population. HIV can affect anyone, independently of their social status, race, gender, etc. This can affect people psychologically, making them feel fear, stress or anxiety. Apart from those factors, in COVID-19, there are others that can make people feel this – the virus is new, there are not known effective antivirals, the disease is more contagious than expected, it can even severely affect young individuals with no previous pathologies, respiratory failure forces hospitalization for many days In addition, the panic is even increased by the presence of the Internet, over-information, spreading of unfounded rumors, and hyper connectivity in our lives nowadays.

Existence of animal reservoirs. The existence of natural animal reservoirs is another point in common, although they are found in different animals, being non-human primates in the case of HIV, and bats in the case of SARS-CoV-2.

Increased synthesis of proinflammatory cytokines. Both viruses generate an increase in the production of cytokine, and this is linked to the viral load in the case of SARS-CoV-2. These cytokines are related with secondary complications in infected people.

Origin Of Antiviral Resistance

The genetic makeup of viruses is constantly changing, which can cause a virus to become resistant to currently available treatments. Viruses can become resistant through spontaneous or intermittent mechanisms throughout the course of an antiviral treatment. Immunocompromised patients, more often than immunocompetent patients, hospitalized with pneumonia are at the highest risk of developing oseltamivir resistance during treatment. Subsequent to exposure to someone else with the flu, those who received oseltamivir for “post-exposure prophylaxis” are also at higher risk of resistance.

Multiple strains of one virus can be present in the body at one time, and some of these strains may contain mutations that cause antiviral resistance. This effect, called the quasispecies model, results in immense variation in any given sample of virus, and gives the opportunity for natural selection to favor viral strains with the highest fitness every time the virus is spread to a new host. Also, recombination, the joining of two different viral variants, and reassortment, the swapping of viral gene segments among viruses in the same cell, play a role in resistance, especially in influenza.

Antiviral resistance has been reported in antivirals for herpes, HIV, hepatitis B and C, and influenza, but antiviral resistance is a possibility for all viruses. Mechanisms of antiviral resistance vary between virus types.

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The Most Common Symptoms Of Seroconversion Are:

• sore throat
• fever
• rash over the body.

Seroconversion is a sign that the immune system is reacting to the presence of the virus in the body. Its also the point at which the body produces antibodies to HIV. Once seroconversion has happened, an HIV test will detect antibodies and give a positive result.

Seroconversion illness happens to most people shortly after infection. It can be severe enough to put someone in hospital or so mild that its mistaken for something like flu although a blocked or runny nose is not usually a symptom.

If you do have HIV, your body fluids are highly infectious during the early weeks and months after transmission. However, once youre on effective treatment and your viral load becomes undetectable you cannot pass on HIV.

It can take up to six months from starting treatment to become undetectable.

Profile Of A Killer: The Complex Biology Powering The Coronavirus Pandemic

In 1912, German veterinarians puzzled over the case of a feverish cat with an enormously swollen belly. That is now thought to be the first reported example of the debilitating power of a coronavirus. Veterinarians didnt know it at the time, but coronaviruses were also giving chickens bronchitis, and pigs an intestinal disease that killed almost every piglet under two weeks old.

The link between these pathogens remained hidden until the 1960s, when researchers in the United Kingdom and the United States isolated two viruses with crown-like structures causing common colds in humans. Scientists soon noticed that the viruses identified in sick animals had the same bristly structure, studded with spiky protein protrusions. Under electron microscopes, these viruses resembled the solar corona, which led researchers in 1968 to coin the term coronaviruses for the entire group.

It was a family of dynamic killers: dog coronaviruses could harm cats, the cat coronavirus could ravage pig intestines. Researchers thought that coronaviruses caused only mild symptoms in humans, until the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome in 2003 revealed how easily these versatile viruses could kill people.

But there are many crucial unknowns about this virus, including how exactly it kills, whether it will evolve into something more or less lethal and what it can reveal about the next outbreak from the coronavirus family.

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Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection

, MD, MAS, University of California, San Diego School of Medicine

• HIV is transmitted through close contact with a body fluid that contains the virus or cells infected with the virus .

• HIV destroys certain types of white blood cells, weakening the bodys defenses against infections and cancers.

• When people are first infected, symptoms of fever, rashes, swollen lymph nodes, and fatigue may last a few days to several weeks.

• Many infected people remain well for more than a decade.

• About half of untreated people become ill and develop AIDS, defined by the presence of serious infections and cancers, within about 10 years.

• Eventually, most untreated people develop AIDS.

• Blood tests to check for HIV antibody and to measure the amount of HIV virus can confirm the diagnosis.

• HIV drugs two, three, or more taken togethercan stop HIV from reproducing, strengthen the immune system, and thus make people less susceptible to infection, but the drugs cannot eliminate HIV, which persists in an inactive form.

HIV infections may be caused by one of two retroviruses, HIV-1 or HIV-2. HIV-1 causes most HIV infections worldwide, but HIV-2 causes many HIV infections in West Africa.

Flu Symptoms And Treatment

If you get sick with flu symptoms call your doctor right away. There are antiviral drugs that can treat flu illness and prevent serious flu complications. These drugs work best the sooner they are started. CDC recommends prompt treatment for people who have flu infection or suspected flu infection and who are at high risk of serious flu complications, such as people living with HIV.

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A Timeline Of Hiv Symptoms

• Final stage

What is HIV?

HIV is a virus that compromises the immune system. Theres currently no cure for it, but there are treatments available to reduce its effects on peoples lives.

In the majority of cases, once HIV infection takes hold, the virus stays in the body for life. However, unlike what may occur with infections by other types of viruses, HIV symptoms dont suddenly appear and peak overnight.

If left untreated, the disease progresses over time through three stages, each with its own set of possible symptoms and complications some severe.

Regular antiretroviral treatment can reduce HIV to undetectable levels in the blood. At undetectable levels, the virus wont progress to the later stages of HIV infection. In addition, the virus cant be transmitted to a partner during sex.