gerri@watson.ibm.com (Gerri Oppedisano) (06/24/91)
> 1) It is possible to be infected with HIV without developing AIDS. The > exact numbers aren't known, but it's becoming clear that some people > can remain asymptomatic for years. It's both discouraging and > inaccurate to say that someone has "caught the AIDS virus" when they > might not ever develop any symptoms. > > A term which is coming into increasing use in the San Francisco Bay Area > is "HIV Disease", which encompasses a variety of symptoms and illnesses > not included in the CDC definition of AIDS. It also does not have the > connotations that "AIDS" has. > > 2) HIV is not the only cause of AIDS (although it is the leading one). > "HIV" is a more specific term, and therefore preferable for the cases > we talk about in this newsgroup (which probably ought to be called > sci.med.hiv). > -- > Jack Hamilton jfh@netcom.com apple!netcom!jfh Has there been any person who has AIDS who didn't have HIV+ status first? How long has the longest period of HIV+ status without symptoms been? I've heard that everyone who is HIV+ eventually develops AIDS; is this rumor? gerri@watson.ibm.com
mwfolsom%hydra.unm.edu@ariel.unm.edu (Mike Folsom) (06/25/91)
In article <1991Jun24.151525.1480@cs.ucla.edu> gerri@watson.ibm.com (Gerri Oppedisano) writes: > >Has there been any person who has AIDS who didn't have HIV+ >status first? How long has the longest period of HIV+ status >without symptoms been? I've heard that everyone who is HIV+ >eventually develops AIDS; is this rumor? > >gerri@watson.ibm.com As I understand it there are people who have AIDS who never test positive for HIV. As far as how long somone has been HIV+ before developing AIDS well that gets longer every year. Really the idea of cofactors being involved in AIDS has been around from the start. I understand that recently even people like Gallo have started to talk of cofactors. -- Michael W. Folsom (mwfolsom@unmvm) -or- (mwfolsom@unmvm.unm.edu) Dept. of Biology // UNM (mwfolsom@hydra.unm.edu) Albuquerque, NM 87131 505-277-3859 office -or- 505-277-3505 lab *******************************************************************************
jfh@netcom.com (Jack Hamilton) (06/25/91)
In article <1991Jun24.151525.1480@cs.ucla.edu> gerri@watson.ibm.com (Gerri Oppedisano) writes, in response to my earlier article: >Has there been any person who has AIDS who didn't have HIV+ >status first? Two answers: 1) I corrected my first posting; I should have said that there are AIDS-like illnesses not caused by HIV. 2) There have been people with AIDS who have tested negative for the HIV antibody. It may be that their immune systems had given up and stopped producing them by the time someone did the test. Most people don't have frozen blood stored away for later testing, so there's no way to go back and see if they were HIV antibody positive in the past. I don't know whether these people were tested for the presence of the actual virus after direct viral tests were developed. >How long has the longest period of HIV+ status >without symptoms been? Some of the people in the San Francisco City Clinic Study were HIV+ in the late seventies and have yet to develop AIDS or ARC. Again, it's difficult to say; until recently, a lot of people thought there was no point in taking the test, because there was nothing they could do anyway. There may be someone out there who has been carrying the HIV virus since the beginning, whenever that was. There's just no way to tell. It is clear, though, that some people can live a long time. >I've heard that everyone who is HIV+ >eventually develops AIDS; is this rumor? Yes. -- Jack Hamilton jfh@netcom.com apple!netcom!jfh