Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)

In 1981, a cluster of cases of Pneumocystis pneumonia appeared in the Los Angeles area. This extremely rare disease usually occurred only in immunosuppressed individuals. Investigators soon correlated the appearance of this disease with an unusual incidence of a rare form of cancer of the skin and blood vessels called Kaposi's sarcoma. The people affected were all young homosexual men, and all showed a loss of immune function. By 1983, the pathogen causing the loss of immune function had been identified as a virus that selectively infects T helper cells. This virus is now known as human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV (Figure l).

Figure 1. Several human immunodeficiency viruses (HIVs), the causative agent of AIDS, budding from a CD4 ⁺ T cell.

Дата добавления: 2014-01-11