Korean-American medical student
Posts tagged HIV
The HIV treatment primer
Oct 18th
BACKGROUND To understand HIV medication, one must first understand the 6 crucial steps that HIV needs to complete in order to replicate and spread. In order, they are: Binding and fusion: HIV binds to either or both of two cell receptors known as CCR5 (typically in initial stages of infection) and CXCR4 (often in later…
What is the distinction between HIV and AIDS?
Oct 10th
HIV is the viral agent that causes the condition known as AIDS. It might help to decipher the abbreviations: HIV = Human Immunodeficiency Virus AIDS = Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome In common use, the terms HIV and AIDS are often used interchangeably. The distinction is made clinically because infection with HIV typically doesn’t immediately cause AIDS,…
What percent of the people in the United States are infected with HIV?
Sep 19th
There are ~1.2 million persons currently documented as living with HIV. The slight problem with this figure is that ~25% of HIV-positive persons don’t know they’re infected, so estimates should really start more in the ballpark of 1.5-1.7 million. This translates to an average incidence of ~0.6% among adults. The number of new infections per…