Today is the 1st of December, international AIDS
day. The human immunodefeciency virus (HIV) is a subgroup of retrovirus (a
lentivirus to be exact) that causes HIV infection and acquired immunodefeciency
syndrome (AIDS). AIDS is a condition in humans in which progressive failure of
our immune system allows potentially life-threatening infections and even
cancers to thrive. Currently there are two types of HIV that have been
characterised : HIV-1 with high virulence and high infectivity which is
common globally, and HIV-2 with low virulence and accordingly low infectivity
which is prelevant for West Africa. According to WHO since the beginning of the
epidemic almost 78 million people have been infected with HIV and around 39
million people have died from HIV. By the end of 2013 approximately 35 million
people worldwide were infected with HIV virus.
Despite of intense research existing treatments
from HIV are far from being satisfying. Current advance of combined HIV
treatment includes multiple antiretroviral drugs which help to keep the
disease in a chronic state where it does not progress into AIDS. However any
disease and in particular HIV is easier and cheaper to prevent than to treat. Currently
we have preventive vaccines against such diseases as polio, chicken pox,
measles, rubella and many others. We often forget how many lives these
maladies took before the vaccines were developed. But what about AIDS ?
