Final Blog

This is my last Blog on HIV. I am excited. I think I have learned a lot in the class. It was definatly a life alterign experience and made me think about people who are HIV positive. I really liked the class and have mentioned to a few people about taking it. Tommorow I am actually going to a local high school's health class to do a presentation on HIV even though I am not getting extra credit. I want to do it, I actually talked to my girlfriend about HIV a lot and she said she never learned anything like this in high school and I think that is the main reason why I am going to go. Another positive I have had in this class was maybe in my future I know what to lok for if someone has PCP, thrush, and KPs. A quicker diagnosis would probably help save that person's life.
DID YOU KNOW
The reason HIV is so hard to stop is the simple reason that HIV under reverse transcirptase does nto always make perfect copies of the DNA of the HIV's RNA. We actually talked a little bit about this in my genetics class. Reverse transcriptase does make more mistakes and regular DNA sythesis or transription of streight DNA. So this would make sence about its quick change in the virility. Maybe one day some HIV strand will make a mistake and become anti-HIV (CDC, 2009).
HIV, Hard to Kill
The reason a vaccine is hard to make is because of the constand changing of the HIV RNA. Another major factor is trying to isolate the HIV in each cell. Trying to make a vaccine for something that is hiding in a cell is next to impossible.
CDC. HIV AIDS. retrieved April 15th, 2010 from http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/hivaids/understanding/biology/Pages/biology.aspx

April 6th

This week I watched Philadelphia. This is the first time I have ever watched the movie but I already had the general premise. Watching Devenzel Washington's character change throughout the movie I think mimic my own transformation through taking this course. To begin with I was harsh to people who had HIV/AIDS and I though that maybe the best thing for them would be to put all of the HIV positive people on an island somewhere to live out their days. I knew you could not catch HIV from any other way except the four types of body fluids. To understanding what the disease is and understand people with it, that take care and inform people who need to know, can still be a productive member of society.
I have felt like I have change my views, I do not blanket everyone as being evil and maniacal trying to spread the disease and intentionally infecting people. I know that a lot of people do not even know that they are infected but the people who know they are HIV positive do things right. I still hate people who knowingly go around infecting other people. I truly look forward to the day that HIV is no longer a threat.
DID YOU KNOW?
That HIV can remain latent in cells in the brain, lymph nodes, skin, peripheral blood, reticuloendothelial system, bone marrow, and gastrointestinal cells (NIAID, 2009). The virus stays in the cytoplasm in it's latent form to remain undetected by the immune system (NIAID, 2009). I thought this was interesting because it can be in more than just the T-cells. This also would make it harder for the disease to be naturalized.
NAIAD. Aprhttp://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/HIVAIDS/Understanding/Biology/Pages/hidesImmuneSystem.aspxil 28th, 2009. HIV Hides from the Immune System. Retreievd April 6th, 2010 from

Weekly Blog

This past week has been pretty good. Saturday I went to the casino in Tampa. It was fun I lost fourty dollars but everyone else that I went with won money. My dad was up a couple of hundred dollars but he only brough home sixty. That was a good day. This week in the class was very relaxed. It was just finishing the journal this week.
I really thought that the regement was difficult to maintain. It blows my mind to think about people who had to take over twenty pills a day. I also looked into the HIV timeline. It was hard to believe that it took three years to find out what was causing AIDS. Just reading the timeline and the expedential growth of the disease blows my mind. I looked over the first MMWR ,June 1981, and read the diagnoses. You could tell by the verbage they had no idea what these people had. They were dealing with the symptoms but they all died anyway. I really think that that MMRW is one of the most important documents in HIV/AIDS research just because it was the first publication to put it out there even though there were people in other countries already dieing from the same thing.
DID YOU KNOW?
In 2006 they developed the first once a day pill to treat HIV, Atripla. I thought this was an interesting fact because it was twenty-five years after they recogninition of the disease. It took them six years just to have some kind of treatment for the disease. I just thought that modern medicine would have did that a lot quicker.
Avert. Febuary 24th, 2010. History of AIDS 2003-2006. Retrieved March 30th, 2010 from http://www.avert.org/aids-history03-06.htm

Week March 19-26th

This week I talked to my dad about the question of the week and told him I do not think I would not tell anyone that my grandpa was HIV+. He agreed with me. He said that sort of thing was nto anyone elses buisness but there own and who ever they tell. My dad said he would do everything I would have done. Everyone says I am like my dad I guess this is just another example.
Beyond that I liked having the test. Honestly it was just basic common sence stuff. I mean if you had a pulse and somewhat did your work you could have at least made an 85%. I liked the slides with the man using the condoms on every apendage.
DID YOU KNOW?
The US does not grant permenant legal residense, under normal circumstances, to immagrents who are HIV positive (AIDS.gov, 2010). I thought this was interesting. I guess it shoudl make sence but it is wierd to actually see. I wonder if this blankets all cronic, passable diseases.
Immigration. AIDS.gov. January 4th, 2010. Retrieved March 26th, 2010 from http://aids.gov/federal-resources/policies/immigration/.

March 15th

My spring break was all set around gettign ready for turkey season. I have been setting up blinds and putting out corn where I can hopefully get a nice gobbler. Besides that, I have really not been focusing on this class. A nice break away from the bleakness of HIV. In genetics we have been studying the components of gentic material and when we talk about retroviruses we always talk about HIV, I guess it is because it is the most infamous retorvirus. Like today in class my proffesor said that HIV was one of the few viruses that had there capsule enter the cell. I sat in class and new why. I even leaned over and told my buddy why. So at least two of my classes are running together.
DID YOU KNOW?
HIV belong to a subgroup known at lantiviruses which means it is a slow virus.
NIAID. Biology of HIV/AIDS. April 29, 2009. Retrieved March 15th, 2010 from http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/topics/HIVAIDS/Understanding/Biology/

HIV: Why is it immune?
Here is a bit of information that might be good to hear. The gag gene in HIV-2 makes HIV-2 more susetible to the immune system then does the HIV-1. It also only progresses to AIDS in 20% of patients compared to 98% in HIV-1. Making a vaccine that would have a part of this gag gene could make the person stop the progression of HIV-2 into AIDS.
Medical News Today. Gene In HIV Makes HIV-2 Susceptible To Immune System Response, Researchers Say. September 13th, 2007. Retrieved March 15th, 2010 from http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/82159.php

Late Blog

Sorry Teach about having a late blog but I just got finished with what could possibly be the worst week of my life. It started out with my uncle dieing, my dog died (yes I got one for hunting but he got hit by a car), my brother got kicked out of his house and him and his wife are getting a divorce so him and one of his kids have been staying with me. So after that all of that in the front half of the week my niece dislocated her elbow and I had to take her to the hospital. It was rough and I am sorry that this blog is coming late.
Besides that this weeks module I learned a lot about the different diseases associated with AIDS and how it is a kick a man while he is down disease. It never get easy when you slip into AIDS. I picked only four topics but I glanced at most of the diseases on the CDC website. I knew life gets hard on people who have AIDS but I guess it is a little different when you finally see what all of these diseases look like. Another thing i noticed was there are a lot of fungus that become super invasive diseases. The worse fungus i ever had was athletes foot and it sees like people with AIDS are growing mushrooms off of them. I guess I really do not appreciate my immune system until you finally see how everything affects it.
DID YOU KNOW
Last week in genetics my teacher, Dr. Sotero, talked about a gene in Ashkenazi Jews that made them somewhat resistant to HIV-1. The gene that causes this is a mutation on the CCR5, the mutated gene is called the delta 32 allele.

Sotero, Walter. March 1st. Population Genetics. University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL.

Week 5

This week I have begun reading The Nakes Truth, undestandably this might be a little late to start reading a book but if there is a class to be honest in i think this is the one.I actually read one hundred pages of the book the first day I got it. I know to a lot of you out there that is nothing but I do not read that much into books I like much less a book whose biography it is may be the complete opposite of me. Marveyln is a black women from Nashville. I am a white, self proclaimed country boy, from way out yonder Florida. I know i should not enjoy the book, but I actually do. People have a hard time imagining one million people, or one million of anything for that fact. To put a face to AIDS like this book does, really changes the perspective that I had. I had the preconcieved notion that most people who are HIV postive become destitue and alone, not to mention dateless and sexless, but I was wrong. It definatlly changes the way I way I see people with the desease.

Another thing that has happened as I have went through this class is I am always scared I have HIV. I do not know whether this is a common occurance with people in the class or not. I guess that is why you want people to get tested during this class, to put people who are negative's mind at ease and let people who do not know there status know it.
Did You Know
The rate of transmission of HIV through a blood transfusion is between 80-90% whereas thransmission through sexual contact can be as low as .3%
http://uhavax.hartford.edu/bugl/hiv.htm#transmit

HIV in church

This week in church one of the pastors message was having an open heart and not to judge people. He was a New Yorker, which I being a good southerner had trouble getting over, and he did pastoral work in the city. He talked about a man who was for lack of a better term a man whore and how his baby momma wanted him to go to church one time. He did and changed his ways.
Then he talked about another man. A man who he said he saw come in church and sat off by himself and never really talked to anyone so my pastor decided he was going to be proactive. He sat down with the man and they talked. He was a homosexual man who had contracted HIV. He broke down to my pastor and told him everything and how he wanted to give his life to God. Instead of bible beating him with how homosexuals are bad and how HIV was God's wrath, blah blah blah, he didn't he just said okay and would help him where he can. Now my pastor knew nothing about HIV so he was scared he would catch it, but he still would do everything he could with this man. He spent the next few years meeting with this man once a week and in church on Sunday. My pastor never asked him about his sexual orientation after their initial meeting, even though the man said he remained celibate.
This made me think about people who are HIV positive. Maybe if churches looked at people who are HIV positive, despite how they contracted it, it would give those people another outlet for support instead of them feeling judged.

AIDS Foundation of South Africa

When I first read what I would have to be blogging about I had no idea on what country, not to mention what orginization I would write about. So I decided to pick a country first then an orginization. I picked South Africa, what seems to be the epecenter of the AIDS epidemic. What orginization would do more for people than a group of people who are inedated with it everyday. So I hit my best friend GOOGLE , which FYI is a number but it is spelled gogle, and found the AIDS Foundation of South Africa.
One program they are trying to implement is having the aditude towards masculenity align more with traditional western beliefs of masculenity. South Africa also has a high amount of domestic and sexual abuse. This domination of men over women, they believe, is a contributor to the wildfire like spread of HIV in there country.
This groups does everything from raise money and fund exactly what is needed at the time. They also have been persuing laws in South Africa against the descrimination of people with HIV/AIDS. It also has many women support groups all around South Africa.

DID YOU KNOW WHAT HIV LOOKS LIKE?

What makes the HIV virus so potent is because it is a retorvirus. It infiltrates a host cell and burst it keeping part of the cell to form an envelope to keep white blood calls from attacking it or recognizing it as an intruder. When an antibody or white blood cell come in contact with the virus the spikes "tell" the immune system it is from the host. It is because of the ability for the body to not easily detect the HIV virus it makes it hard to develop a vaccine.

This Week Post

As I was looking at the world wide number of AIDS patience I was unnerved by some numbers. Actually seeing how some countries' HIV/AIDS patience are scewed so much from sex to the other was just hard to comprehend. I was under the notion that HIV cases were roughly even distributed amongst the sexes. That could not have been farther from the truth. Some countries have 3 times the rate difference amongt the sexes. Even in the US there is a three-forths of new infections are males (Nobel, 2009)

The US, in comparison to the rest of the world, have fewer cases per capa. However it is still scary just knowing that there are a lot people who do have HIV/AIDS. The county I live in have 31 people in the county that are reported to have HIV (Florida Department of Health, 2009). It is wierd to say that. Thirty one people is a small class but that 31 can explode in no time. It is easy to hear a number of people in a place I will only see pictures of but to hear the number of people who live in my back door is a bigger pill to swollow, even though the number in my back yard is much smaller than that in the land I will never see.

Nobel, Ron. December 4, 2009. "HIV statistics." http://www.avert.org/usa-statisics.htm.

Florida Department of Health. November, 2009. "Florida Deparment of Desease Control Survalence Report."

I am interested in blogging about the virility of HIV/AIDS. I know it mutates based on the antivirals given to the infected patients. I will focus on why and how it does this and in relation why that gives researchers such a problem with developing a vaccine. Of course this will be in some sort of coherent order.