Earlier during the week, I was on an excursion that had been fun all through until I noticed something strange. I called it strange because I was seeing it for the first time. A young beautiful lady sitted next to me brought out a pack of drugs I knew to be antiretroviral drugs and administered them to herself. With great shock I said to myself, so I have been sitting next to an HIV patient although to be frank, I really did enjoy her company throughout the excursion perhaps because she is in her own class of beauty. Lost in my own thoughts I began to wonder how soon are we to seeing the end of this menace-HIV For decades, the Human Immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has posed a major challenge to scientist and researchers who are working tirelessly to bring an end to it reign. Through cumulative effort of researches and experiments , some level of success have been achieved but then, there is still much more success stories the world longs to hear in our fight against a virus that seems smart and unyielding. Before I continue, let have a grasp of what a virus is.
WHAT IS A VIRUS
Viruses are micro-organisms that have the ability to replicate themselves only when they are inside the cell of a host (cells of living things) . Outside of cells of living organism, they are as good as non-living things. Viruses are so small that they can operate well inside the cells of bacteria which of cause is another micro-organism. Many of them can only be seen with the help of an optical microscope. Now of a truth when growing up , the word virus to me is synonymous to sickness, death or chronic fever because I have only known them to be pathogens. But we have quite a few of them that are quite beneficial like the viruses called bacteriophages which can be made to kill some spectrum of harmful bacteria and in returns protect humans and other living organisms. But quickly let talk about the harmful ones. Virus on their own cannot survive, permit me to say they are not alive when they are alone so they find means of entering into cells of living organisms after which they become kings. First is that they attach themselves to these cells and and makes use of the resources present in the cell to start replicating themselves at a very fast rate in the host. Basically they contain what is called a nucleic acid which could be of two types, Ribonucleic acid (RNA) and deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). These two acids are proteins and what they do is to store information for and about the virus. They describe the virus and what it does so when an infected cell is to form new cells, the new cells carry the RNA or DNA of the virus hence they become viral cells instead of normal healthy cells. But then , they are strange cells in the body, why shouldn’t the immune system detect and kill them?
zika virus ,picture from wikipedia,labeled for reuse under wikipedia commons
WHY THE IMMUNE SYSTEM SEEMS HELPLESS
The thing Is , virus don’t just cling to any cell. Each cell has a receptor with which it receives information from other cells. Receptors are just proteins via which the cell receives chemical signal from other cells. All the signal has to do is to bind itself to the receptor to transmit the message. Now viruses also have their own kind of protein that can bind with the receptors of cells . This protein differs in viruses hence they could be very selective of the kind of cell they want to bind with. For instance, the mucus lining of the lungs and airways is the choice of the cold and flu virus while the HIV prefers the helper T cell of the white blood cell. So the virus is best shaped to fit in perfectly in to the cells through the receptors.
Virus and receptors, image from wikipedia, labelled for reuse under the wikipedia commons
NOW HOW DOES HIV THRIVE
Hiv is a virus that I believe is very smart. The goal is to do something which is to completely destroy the human immune system which is responsible for fighting against illness and diseases in the human body.Hence after accomplishing such a task, the human body becomes vulnerable to any form of disease and I mean any so much that death could arise from any form of disease. When it gets to this stage, it becomes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). On entering into the human body, the first thing the virus looks for is the cell it prefers to bind with whch is the Helper T cell. The helper T cell is a very important cell in the white blood cell and in the immune system.
One of the things it does is like the job of a cop. Once it patrols the human body and detect any strange cell, it sends a message to other cells in the immune system to inform them about the strange presence hence to a great extent, the helper t cells lead the fight against infections. They are also called the CD4 cells. So what HIV does is to end the fight before it begins by attacking the helper T cells before it is able to release any signal. It doesn’t stop there, it injects it own RNA into the CD4 cells and the cells helps it to replicate itself at a very fast rate. This is the first step to the total breakdown of the immune system. Once this occurs, the number of infected cells in the body increases while more and more CD4 cells get infected and destroyed. However, the immune system still attempts to handle the situation with the help of unaffected CD4 cells and other cells in the body so the immune system launches an attack against the virus usually within 2-4 weeks of infection. Doctors refer to this as the acute primary infection. Due to this war going on in the body, the patient tends to experience headache, fever ,rash, sore throat and muscle aches.
WHO WINS THE FIGHT?
The immune system attempts to destroy all the HIV in the body but here is the problem, the virus reproduces at a very fast rate hence it gets to a point where the rate at which the body is destrying the HIV cells is equal to the rate at which the cells are being reproduced. Doctors call this the clinical latency period. One thing about this stage is that the virus has also found it way to key regions in the body such as the brain, the genital tracts hence making more difficult for the immune system to handle. The battle however continues but this time around, there are no symptoms and all seems well. This can last for a very long period depending on the strength of the host immune system. The penultimate stage of the virus is the symptomatic HIV infection. At this point, the body begins to loose the fight as more CD4 cells are being lost than they are being produced hence the viral load in the body increases significantly. At this point, opportunistic infections that the body would have handled on a good day begin to take advantage of the weak immune system and the body seems hopeless against them as it is experiencing a great siege from the HIV . The patient tends to experience weight loss, memory loss, diarrhea and recurring fever. The last stage starts when the immune system finally gives up. At this point, the CD4 count of the blood falls sporadically while the viral load increases sporadically. At this point, the HIV as progressed to AIDS which is a state of being without an immune system. Illnesses that accompany this are cancer, tuberculosis, pneumonia and more and more opportunistic infections which finally lead to the destruction of key organs in the human body and finally death. So sad right!
WHAT IS THE WAY OUT
As at the time I am writing this post, there isn’t any vaccine or drug to cure an HIV patient. Although antiretroviral drugs are used, these drugs are used to manage HIV and are essentially to prevent the replication of the virus in the human body. They have been proven to increase the clinical latency period by decades where the patient can live a normal life once he constantly uses them. What they do really is to inhibit several processes that the virus takes to gain foothold in human body. Examples include Nucleoside/Nucleotide Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NRTIs) which prevents the infected cells from making more HIV, Non-nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NNRTIs) which prevents an HIV from making more copies of itself, Fusion Inhibitors which blocks HIV from getting into new healthy cells and several others .
CAN WE REALLY GET A CURE?
Well impossible is not a word that should be used in science as our knowledge of nature increases daily and the technology of the future is most likely not even yet in our dreams. The challenges being faced with HIV is it ability to mutate easily hence there are several strains (something like versions) of HIV this is primarily because it is a retrovirus. Infact some of them are even resistant to specific anti-retroviral drugs and perhaps if the patient does not use them regularly, the virus just adapts and becomes resistant to the drug.
CONCLUSION
So many research are still going on despite the virus having lasted decades and favourable results are being obatained. Thanks to the inability of the virus to be transmitted so fast like wild fire, i guess it has spared us more time and less haste to fight it out of human existence. Deep in thoughts was i but then the beauty of the lady who lead me into these stream of thoughts was too captivating that i started teaching myself that HIV patient are still normal humans and have the right to live and enjoy life which includes enjoying it with everyone and surely the best things in life too.Let be cool with them because for some, the thoughts of having a virus in their body alone is their worst nightmare.
REFERENCES
https://hivcare.org/hiv-basics/
https://www.hivplusmag.com/features/2015/04/20/25-things-everyone-needs-know-about-hiv