How does Aids Affect the Immune System?

AIDS affects the immune system by attacking it and breaking it down and making it susceptible to infections. The body then becomes unable to fight of infections and the virus takes over.

A healthy body has CD4 helper lymphocyte cells (CD4 cells). These cells help the immune system function normally and fight off certain kinds of infections. They do this by acting as messengers to other types of immune system cells, telling them to become active and fight against an invading germ.

HIV attaches to these CD4 cells. The virus then infects the cells and uses them as a place to multiply. In doing so, the virus destroys the ability of the infected cells to do their job in the immune system.

The body then loses the ability to fight many infections. Because their immune systems are weakened, people who have AIDS are unable to fight off many infections, particularly tuberculosis and other kinds of otherwise rare infections of the lung (such as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia), the surface covering of the brain (meningitis), or the brain itself (encephalitis). People who have AIDS tend to keep getting sicker, especially if they are not taking antiviral medications properly.

AIDS can affect every body system. The immune defect caused by having too few CD4 cells also permits some cancers that are stimulated by viral illness to occur — some people with AIDS get forms of lymphoma and a rare tumor of blood vessels in the skin called Kaposi's sarcoma. Because AIDS is fatal, it's important that doctors detect HIV infection as early as possible so a person can take medication to delay the onset of AIDS.

How Do People Know They Have HIV? Severe symptoms of HIV infection and AIDS may not appear for as long as 10 years (or more for some people). For years leading up to that, people with HIV may not notice any signs that they have the virus.

How long it takes for symptoms of HIV/AIDS to appear varies from person to person. Some people may feel and look healthy for years while they are infected with HIV. It is still possible to infect others with HIV, even if the person with the virus has absolutely no symptoms.

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