Word: spreading
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...that allows it to reproduce itself a thousand times as fast as any other kind of virus. The mechanism for this reproduction "is one of the biggest effects I've seen in biology," says Haseltine. "It helps explain why AIDS is such a devastating disease and why it can spread so fast." In the process of rampant replication, the AIDS virus destroys its home, the T cell. Thus it is a peculiar feature of this disease that as it progresses, the helper T cells disappear and so does the virus. By then, however, the patient is invariably beyond recovery...
Scientists are also trying to learn more about how and when the disease is spread. Are there, for example, certain periods of time when a person is more infectious than others? Many answers will be found within the next year or so, predicts Curran. "We'll know the risk of a pregnant mother in delivering a healthy infant vs. an ill one or a stillborn. We'll be able to quantify those kinds of things...
...them were infected with a virus similar to the one that causes AIDS in humans. Curiously, the virus does not seem to harm the monkeys, a fact that might hold important clues for future research. Essex suspects that in the past 20 to 40 years, the virus spread from monkeys to man. Other viruses have made this leap--notably jungle yellow fever virus--and, he notes, the greens often live in close association with people and frequently bite them. How the disease might have traveled from Africa to the U.S. and Haiti is anybody's guess. One "intriguing" clue, says...
There has so far been just one remark able success in the otherwise losing battle to contain the spread of AIDS. That is the rapid development of tests to detect signs of the virus in donor blood. About 2% of AIDS cases in the U.S. have occurred as a result of the contamination of blood used in transfusions or in blood products like the clotting factor needed by hemophiliacs. The toll includes infants, children, even a 66-year...
...Angeles, Carol Archer, 40, was assigned by the Shanti Foundation, another AIDS support group, to attend to the needs of a dying 31-year-old patient. He was alone; family and friends had withdrawn from him as lesions spread over most of his body. When Archer helped him with his will and funeral arrangements, he began to sob. She reached out, hugged him and rocked him in her arms. "He cried all the harder," she recalls, "then he looked up at me and said, 'No one's touched me in so long...