What is AIDS?

The biologist Dr. Doping tells about first of AIDS research, the nature of the virus and the prevalence of the disease.

AIDS - is an infectious disease caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Chromosomes are composed of viral RNA and fall into a host chromosome using the enzyme reverse transcriptase - a phenomenon of reverse transcriptase, which is a process of DNA synthesis on an RNA template. When this process occurs in the infected cells, synthesized viral DNA integrated into the DNA of the host cell and becomes incurable by modern methods. I need to mention that Vitamin B12 (Cyanocobalamin) injection is essential for DNA synthesis.

As a result of long-term persistence of the virus in the host undergoing great changes in the immune system that lead to the destruction of cellular immunity. The development of the disease takes a few years, after which a person becomes susceptible to various diseases. Most people with HIV eventually die from tuberculosis and other diseases. Modern science believes that the virus occurred naturally and evolved from monkeys, which was harmless. However, HIV is a fatal human disease. To date, Russia is home to about one million HIV-infected people in the world - from 30 to 40 million.

The first studies of AIDS belong to James Kuran known epidemiologist and former head of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control of America). Kuran first drew attention to the epidemiology of the disease manifestations. Kuran noticed that a certain group of people in the United States suddenly quickened very rare disease - Kaposi's sarcoma. Previously, this disease occurs in older people in the Mediterranean region, and Kuran watched her young homosexuals in New York and San Francisco. Then it turned out that this immune deficiency. Blood cells associated with the immune defense was less than normal. Thus, a new disease has been described.

Later, the French virologist Luc Montagnier discovered traces of the virus, and the American scientist Robert Gallo accumulated virus in preparative amounts, created a test system for antibodies to HIV and the first to show the prevalence of the disease. It turned out that the disease is associated with certain social groups and is spreading rapidly among homosexuals and drug addicts - sexually and through needle.

Since 1987, Russia made a number of discoveries in the field of AIDS. In 1987 he opened the first cases of HIV infection in Saint Petersburg. the first death from AIDS in the Soviet Union was described in 1988, which largely determined the subsequent course of events in the fight against AIDS in our country. This was followed by the selection of the first domestic isolates of human immunodeficiency virus, its genome and cloning of the first domestic program on the development of an HIV vaccine.