AIDS can be transmitted through blood.
AIDS is a viral disease characterized by the absence of an immune response . The term is an acronym for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome .
HIV ( Human Immunodeficiency Virus ) is the virus that causes the disease known as AIDS (also written as AIDS ). It was discovered by the French researcher Luc Montagnier in 1983 .
It is important to keep in mind that being infected with HIV is not the same as having AIDS. People who belong to the first group are considered seropositive , that is, they have antibodies in their blood due to the presence of the virus; It is only when these defenses become insufficient that AIDS develops.
AIDS transmission
HIV is transmitted through blood , semen, vaginal secretions, and breast milk. This means that HIV-positive subjects must do everything possible to avoid the exchange of said fluids since they can infect other people and, in this way, spread AIDS.
Many people tend to believe that AIDS turns everyday life into a minefield, and this is not necessarily true; The use of condoms to have sexual relations, for example, is an act of responsibility that everyone should perform, especially when they do not know the health status of the other individual.
On the other hand, sharing a glass, hugging, kissing the cheek or shaking hands are actions that do not imply any risk of contagion. The prevention of AIDS, therefore, implies responsibility and correct education about the true limits of this disease.
Using a condom when having sexual relations drastically reduces the risk of contracting AIDS.
The treatment
AIDS can be treated through antiretroviral drug therapies , which act at different stages of the HIV life cycle.
There are scientists who maintain, however, that antiretrovirals cause AIDS, although this theory is usually rejected by most specialists.
The myth of AIDS and homosexuality
According to immunology specialist Michal S. Gottlieb , who worked at the University of California hospital ( Los Angeles ), when the first cases of AIDS appeared in the United States , the relationship between this terrible disease and homosexuality was a unfortunate coincidence , the product of media manipulation that took advantage of the cultural reality of the time.
It was in January 1981 when he treated the first patient with AIDS, who entered the clinic with severe pneumonia and showing significant weight loss. This was a homosexual man, who died in less than a year, along with the handful of similar cases that followed. Gottlieb comments that none of these people were aware that they had an immunological disorder , a "time bomb" that would consume them in a few months; some of them thought that an injection would be enough to cure them.
After three similar symptoms, doctors knew that they were facing a new disease, a milestone in medicine , although they never imagined that it would be the future cause of millions of deaths. Curiously, since all the early patients had been homosexual, the scientists' perception was that sexuality was somehow related to the virus. However, when the State scoured New York and San Francisco for similar cases, heterosexual victims turned up.
Gottlieb 's opinion regarding the supposed relationship between AIDS and homosexuality is explained by a series of historical coincidences: the virus arrived in North America in the 1960s and began to be transmitted through the indiscriminate use of syringes; However, a decade later, there was a sexual liberation that led to promiscuity among many homosexuals, which is why the initial volume of their cases exceeded that of heterosexuals.