¶ … HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a virus that attacks the immune system causing the individual to be at risk for opportunity infections, or infections that come about because the immune system is weak. It is a slow progressive disease that is present throughout the body. Humans can get infected with HIV through contact with tissues, such as vaginal, anal area, mouth, eyes, or a break in the skin, such as a wound. It is diagnosed with blood tests and treated with a combination of drug therapies. There has been no cure found for HIV, so the person ends up dying from the virus in the long run.

The most common way HIV is spread is through sexual contact, needle sharing, and transmission from an infected mother to a baby through pregnancy, labor, or breastfeeding. It is spread by body secretions of an infected person to tissues of another person. When secretions of the infected person comes into contact with tissues in the vaginal, anal area, mouth, eyes, or cuts and punctures in the skin, such as wounds or needle holes, the virus is spread to the other person. HIV can also be spread through blood transfusions. HIV is present in blood, semen, vaginal fluid, injections, and breast milk as free virus particles and virus within infected immune cells.

HIV comes in three stages. The initial stage starts within weeks of contact. It often comes with flu like symptoms of body aches, fever, fatigue, headache, swelling of the lymph nodes, and runny nose. After an infected person overcomes these symptoms, they go through the second stage, which is a long duration period of eight to ten years with no symptoms at all.

The second stage is called the asymptomatic period. Even without symptoms, the virus still continues...

The CD4 cells may continue to decline and cause more weakness in the immune system where the immune system becomes weaker and weaker as time goes on. The person can develop vaginal and oral thrush, fungal infections the finger and toe nails, white brush like border on the sides of the tongue, chronic rashes, diarrhea, fatigue, and weight loss.
The third stage is called the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) period. The immune system progressively becomes weak and the person has complications of one or more unusual infections or cancers, severe weight loss, and intellectual deterioration where dementia comes. Dementia is where the person does not know what they are doing. They are confused about everything. The short-term memory is lost and they may have spells where they remember something from the long-term memory, but may be confused with some of the facts about the particular incidences. The AIDS period allows life threating opportunistic infections and cancers to live.

HIV progresses different for each person. How it progresses is determined by specific infections or complications. It also affects different parts of the body, such as mouth, brain, losing weight, and skin conditions. Where some develop other illnesses and diseases from a skin cancers and rashes. The illnesses and diseases the person catches depends on what germs they are around in their environments. If the person goes around someone with the flu, they can easily catch the flu depending on how weak the immune system has become and how advanced the virus has become in the body.

Once HIV enters the body, it attacks the helper T cells, CD4 cells, macrophages, and dendritic cells. The helper T cells are a type of white blood cell that are a…