Tropical Travel Trouble 009 Humongous HIV Extravaganza

LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
aka Tropical Travel Trouble 009

The diagnosis of HIV is no longer fatal and the term AIDS is becoming less frequent. In many countries, people with HIV are living longer than those with diabetes. This post will hopefully teach the basics of a complex disease and demystify some of the potential diseases you need to consider in those who are severely immunosuppressed. While trying to be comprehensive this post can not be exhaustive (as you can imagine any patient with a low CD4 count – all bets are off) and aims to focus on the key learning points surrounding HIV.

Peer Reviewer Dr McBride ID physician, Wisconsin
Questions:
Q1. What is HIV?
Answer and interpretation
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Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is caused by a lentivirus (subgroup of retrovirus) that infects and destroys immune cells expressing CD4 (T-helper cells, macrophages and dendritic cells). 
There are two viruses, HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is more common and aggressive than HIV-2. HIV-2 is largely confined to West Africa and to areas with West African immigrants. Co-infection can occur as infection with one does not protect against the other. Transmission and clinical presentation are similar except that HIV-2 takes several years longer than HIV-1 to cause ...

Source: Life in the Fast Lane - July 7, 2018 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Amanda McConnell Tags: Clinical Cases Tropical Medicine AIDS art cryptococcoma cryptococcus HIV HIV1 HIV2 PEP PrEP TB toxoplasma tuberculoma Source Type: blogs