Increasingly in Canada, people who have HCV are also infected with HIV. People living with both HIV and HCV face significantly increased health challenges. These challenges are not impossible to overcome, but do require that people have access to knowledgeable healthcare and information in order to manage their dual conditions and live long and healthy lives. For more information on HIV, visit CATIE’s website at www.catie.ca. Here’s a quick overview:
What is HIV?
HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. It is a virus that attacks a person’s immune system and causes AIDS. AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.
How is HIV transmitted?
HIV is carried in four body fluids: blood, semen, vaginal fluids, and breast milk. A person can be infected with HIV when one of these fluids gets into the body. This usually happens in the following ways:
- through unprotected sex (usually anal or vaginal sex)
- by reusing drug use equipment already used by someone else
- mother-to-child transmission during childbirth or breastfeeding, if the mother has HIV
- from a blood transfusion in Canada before 1985
HIV enters the body in many of the same ways as Hep C and hepatitis B, so people can take the same steps to protect themselves from Hep C, hepatitis B and HIV. (See the section on Harm Reduction for more information.)
What is CD4+?
CD4+ refers to a kind of white blood cell that is part of the immune system. Like other parts of the immune system, CD4+ cells help to keep people healthy. They protect the body by coordinating other parts of the immune system to attack viruses, bacteria and other invaders that may cause illness.
What does HIV do?
HIV gets into a CD4+ cell and uses it to make more viruses (called replication). This causes the CD4+ cell’s functioning to be impaired and the cell eventually dies. When there are fewer CD4+ cells, it is easier for other viral or bacterial infections to set in and make a person sick. CD4+ cell count is an important measure of how well the immune system is functioning. A good immune system generally has a CD4+ count greater that 500 but this can vary from person to person.
HIV viral load is also an important measure of HIV disease. The more HIV present in the body, the more the virus attacks the immune system and the greater the chance of getting sick.
HIV is a virus that attacks a person’s immune system and causes AIDS.
Over time, when HIV has killed many CD4+ cells, the immune system will not work as well. A person is then susceptible to illnesses that a healthy immune system could easily control. These are called AIDS-defining illnesses or opportunistic infections and include some types of pneumonia (like PCP) and some cancers (like Kaposi’s sarcoma). In Canada, a person is considered to have AIDS if he or she is has HIV and gets sick with one or more of these diseases.
When someone has HIV, it is important to have regular checkups with a doctor to monitor HIV viral load and CD4+ count because these will guide decisions around starting or changing treatment.
HIV Treatment
There is no cure for HIV, but there are medicines that fight HIV. HIV medicines are called Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) and involve taking three or more drugs at the same time.
These medicines can reduce the HIV viral load in blood and semen to undetectable levels. Most HIV viral load tests can only detect more than 50 copies/ml and cannot measure below this threshold. HIV is still in the body and researchers are not yet sure if transmission can still occur. However, when the virus is undetectable it is prevented from killing off CD4+ cells, and the body can replenish the CD4+ cells that have already died to a level that will protect a person from getting sick.
HIV is tricky and can mutate, which means its genetic makeup changes. This leads to “drug resistance” where a person’s drug combination will not work to stop HIV from replicating. Drug resistance happens especially if a person does not take his or her medicines regularly. But because there are more than 20 different anti-HIV drugs, and different combinations of these drugs, people have many treatment options and they can live long and healthy lives with HIV.
Visit www.catie.ca to find out more about HIV or HIV treatment.
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