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A newsletter for the students, faculty and staff of the Collin County Community College District. Published monthly. For information or submissions, call 972.599.3142. Cougar News welcomes student and faculty submissions. Next deadline: January 10. All submissions are due by 5 p.m. on the due date. Photos cannot be returned. Text should be emailed to mrobinson@ccccd.edu or sent on disk. Please submit copy that is proofed, edited and saved in Word format. Cougar News staff: Lisa Vasquez, director; Mark Robinson, editor; Marcy Cadena-Smith, contributor; Stephanie Hall, student correspondent; Adriana Rodriguez, student correspondent; special contributors: Heather Darrow, Sonya Flaming, John Glass; Nick Young, photography and layout.
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Knowledge is power: Just the facts on HIV/AIDS
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| Dr. Carroll Bottoms | The third Knowledge is Power lecture series: the "ABCs of HIV: Fiction and Fact on AIDS," drew a full crowd of students and community members to the Preston Ridge Campus recently. Collin microbiology professor Dr. Carroll Bottoms and history professor Dr. Keith Volanto pierced misconceptions about the disease and explained both the history and biology behind the malady.
Dr. Carroll Bottoms holds a BS in biology and a master’s degree in biology with a concentration in biochemistry from Angelo State University. She holds a Ph.D. in virology/immunology from Mississippi State University. Dr. Bottoms performed cancer research at Emory University State University and researched Feline Immunodeficiency Disease at Mississippi State University
“I want to stress that HIV/AIDS is a human disease. It does not only affect a particular race or sex; it affects all of us. There is so much misinformation about HIV/AIDS. It is important as educators that we present the actual facts and get the myths out of the way because this is a poignant epidemic,” Dr. Bottoms said.
Can you get HIV from toilet seats, kissing or a tattoo?
HIV is not contractible via a toilet seat, and there is only one documented case of HIV from kissing, but a number of people have acquired the virus from tattoos.
HIV only infects a few cells in the body. Unfortunately, the majority of these cells are CD4 receptor bearing cells. There are only a few types of cells that have CD4 receptors, and they are all immune system cells. They include T cells, dendritic cells and macrophages.
Are our cells for us or against us?
Dr. Bottoms describes HIV as an amazing virus because of the way it attacks the body. She says with HIV the dendritic cells are actually traitors to the immune system. Dendritic cells’ purpose is to go to areas that get HIV, find it and bring it back to the lymphocytes where the T and B cells reside. Ironically, HIV infects the very cells that are supposed to protect you.
Why haven’t we made a vaccine for HIV?
One interesting aspect of HIV is that unlike other viruses, it brings its own enzymes into the cell. The main purpose is to get its genome into your own genome. One of the enzymes is reverse transcriptase, which is important in the replication of HIV. Unfortunately, reverse transcriptase is error prone which results in mutation. According to Dr. Bottoms, one of the reasons we are having difficulty creating a vaccine is because we do not know where these mutations will occur.
“Reverse transcriptase is good for the virus and bad for us. Once HIV is incorporated into your system, it cannot be removed. It is now your genome,” Dr. Bottoms said.
Who pushed the self destruct button?
According to Dr. Bottoms, HIV starts a host cell suicide cascade. Cell death actually occurs in our bodies all the time and is a natural process; however, HIV initiates this cell self destruction early and cells start dying before their time. Basically, it boils down to this: if immune cells are dead, they can no longer kill the virus.
Is it the Flu or HIV?
You might suspect that a blood test would give a good reading on how much HIV is raging throughout an individual. Surprisingly, the amount of virus, or viral load, in the blood fluctuates.
When people are first exposed to HIV, they do not have antibodies to fight it. This means cells are being destroyed and releasing virus, and the viral load is high. During this time, people experience swollen lymph nodes, sore throats, muscle aches, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. It sounds like the flu, but it is not.
Eight to 12 weeks later, the viral load drastically decreases as the antibodies are produced. Next, people go into what Dr. Bottoms calls an asymptomatic state. While there may not be any symptoms, individuals are slowly losing CD4 T cells whether they know it or not. People can stay in this latent state for 20-25 years. Finally, in most cases, the virus takes control of the immune system by killing off the majority of its CD4 cells, and the viral load is high again in the blood. At this point, individuals experience consistent weight loss, liver and spleen enlargement and inflammation, and they can also contract thrush, a yeast infection that coats the mouth.
“A normal person has 800-1,200 CD4 T cells per micro liter of blood. A person with AIDS, the advanced stage of HIV, has less than 200 CD4 T cells per micro liter of blood,” Dr. Bottoms said.
The pro and con lists for HIV tests
Currently, the available quick tests detect HIV specific antibodies. The good news is that you can receive results within 30 minutes. The bad news is that it may not be correct. While these tests are standardized, they can produce false positives because a person could have antibodies that are similar to HIV but not HIV. The quick tests can produce false negatives because a person recently exposed to HIV may not have enough antibodies to register on the test.
The slower test currently in use is the Western Blot test which detects HIV proteins. The bad news is that the test is not standardized, and you may have to wait for two weeks to get results. The good news is that it is accurate. According to Dr. Bottoms, you can have HIV antibodies and not have HIV, but you cannot have HIV proteins unless you have the virus.
People do not die from AIDS, nor can AIDS be transmitted to people
According to Dr. Bottoms, people do not die from AIDS; they die from opportunistic diseases, maladies that healthy people can fight off. These diseases include pneumonia, Herpes Simplex, Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Varicella Zoster virus, a reoccurrence of the chicken pox in the form of painful shingles. AIDS can not be transmitted from person to person, but HIV is communicable through blood, blood products and semen.
Is there a cure for HIV?
According to Dr. Bottoms, there is no cure for any viral disease, and that includes HIV.
“HIV and AIDS are going to be around for a long time, so we better get used to having them here and learn how to live with them and deal with them,” Dr. Bottoms said.
While there is no cure, there are 25 FDA-approved drugs that can help prolong people’s lives. Highly Active Anti-Retrovirus Therapy (HAART) is a combination of three or more drugs targeted at viral enzymes. According to Dr. Bottoms, the goal of these drug treatments is to suppress levels of HIV.
A historical look at HIV/AIDS
Collin history professor Dr. Keith Volanto holds a BS in electrical engineering, a master’s degree in history from California State University and a Ph.D. in history from Texas A&M University.
According to Dr. Volanto, 40,000 Americans a year contract AIDS and the number of Americans with HIV/AIDS was 1.2 million at of the end of 2005. Last year alone, America lost 16,000 people to AIDS, making the total Americans lost to AIDS about 600,000 people.
Where did AIDS come from?
According to Dr. Volanto, AIDS originated in the early twentieth century in Africa. Originally a primate disease, HIV crossed over to humans. The first documented case of AIDS was in 1959, though they did not know it at the time. Because doctors did not know the cause of death, they saved blood and tissue samples. Later, they confirmed that this individual had HIV and died of AIDS related symptoms. The first documented case of an AIDS related death in America was in 1969. Doctors who treated a St. Louis teenager could not explain his death, so they also preserved blood and tissue samples. Year later, tests proved that this individual also had HIV.
The AIDS epidemic began in June 1981 according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). At first, people believed that it was a homosexual disease. The New York Times called it a homosexual disorder in 1982. The CDC referred to it as Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID), though they later named it Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). In May 1983, French doctors discovered people had acquired a particular virus (HIV).
According to Dr. Volanto, the U.S. government, and the Reagan administration in particular, was criticized for being slow in responding to the disease. It was only after President Reagan’s friend, Rock Hudson, died of AIDS related symptoms that the president began to speak publicly about AIDS. While President Reagan may have been slow to speak out about the disease, Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said, “The silence must end.” He believed children should be educated about the disease at an early age, and he advocated the use of condoms.
People’s perspectives on AIDS continue to chance
In December 1985, the majority of people favored quarantining people with AIDS, and 15 percent were in favor of tattooing people who had the syndrome. Fifty one percent thought a person was to blame if he or she contracted the disease, and 43 percent thought AIDS was divine punishment for moral decline. People began to panic and avoided public restrooms.
The first anti AIDS drugs were available in 1987. When famous tennis player and heterosexual Arthur Ashe acquired HIV after a blood transfusion, the public perception of HIV/AIDS and who was at risk began to change. According to Dr. Volanto, there is a 90 percent chance of contracting HIV if you have received a blood transfusion through HIV infected blood. In 1993, the movie Philadelphia increased awareness about AIDS and tried to dispel misnomers about the disease. In 1990, 18,000 Americans died from AIDS related causes and in 1995, the number rose to more than 50,000. The late 1990’s brought a decline of AIDS related deaths due to education about the disease.
In 1996, only 12 percent of people polled thought that AIDS came from God to punish sexual behavior, and 50 percent said it was appropriate for 10-12 year olds to get information about AIDS. However, in the mid 1990s 18 percent believed HIV was produced in germ warfare.
What about AIDS today?
According to Dr. Volanto, the sense of urgency about AIDS has declined. In May 2006, 10 percent of people polled actually believed that doctors had found a cure for AIDS. In truth, there is no cure, and the epidemic is far from over.
“While the number of people dying has gone down from the peak in 1995, the number of people with AIDS is still growing; we still have new people being infected or acquiring HIV,” Dr. Volanto said.
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