My fifth week

Hi everyone,

Hope you have had another good week. This week has been pretty laid back compared to others, and mainly my week focused on finishing assignment three. I finished the book At Risk this week and was kind of disappointed about the ending. The book ended with Amanda, becoming really sick again and leaving for the hospital most likely not coming back. I do not know if the book ended right before Amanda died, or if the book ended signaling what the rest of Amanda's life would be like. Overall it was a sad book, but also an educational book. The title speaks for itself, "At Risk" it shows how not just the stereotype patients are at risk for HIV, everyone is at risk. No one asks for HIV and it is sad that it happens to unfortunate people everyday.

This weeks question had to do with saving someone who is HIV positive and risk becoming infected yourself. Mainly the story was about if you drove up to a crash and one patient had a lacerated artery and mentioned, "HIV positive" without saying if it was they were or it was the driver what would you do. In my case I would save the patient while trying my hardest to avoid contact with blood. I would probably try to use my shirt or jacket to try and stop and tie off the bleeding. Just because a person is HIV infected does not mean that their life is already over and you shouldn't try as hard to save them. A person is a person no matter what they have and if you do have an HIV patient in your lifetime just think of them as you relative, because you would wanted them to be helped just as much as a non-HIV patient. Remember no one asked to become infected with HIV and it is not their fault, so do not treat them like they did.

Did you Know:

In this weeks did you know I have decided to talk about the cures that are complete myths, but are still believed to work in Africa. Some parts of Africa still to this day believe that HIV/AIDS is more of a punishment for sins than a disease and thus do not look towards medical help. One cure that some people believe in Africa is the virgin cure, according to Science in Africa. According to Science in Africa, " Encompassed in the current belief system of both prevention/cure of HIV/AIDS is the notion that an intact hymen, and the smaller amount of vaginal secretions in young girls, prevent transmission of the disease through sexual intercourse." Also another cure Science in Africa talks about is infant rape, or the force of sexual intercourse between the age of five to eighteen months. Now I know you are all probably looking this at how horrible these people must be, but please put your judgment aside for just one second. Most of the people who believe in these cures are uneducated and the only thing they know is they will die from this curse unless they use one of the two cures. These people are not doing this, because they want to! They are because it is all they know how to do without becoming deathly sick. To me this just proves how education would be one of the main preventives of HIV/AIDS. If we could have the chance to educate everyone on what HIV/AIDS is I can guarantee that the spread of HIV/AIDS would decrease.

Week 4

Hello everyone,

Hope everything is well for you. Anyways this week has been full of HIV/AIDS work thanks to this class. I finished the module about the immune system and was very surprised about how advanced we are about the HIV/AIDS virus. I think that if we already know the structure and function of the virus it should not be too long before we find a way to stop it from working if not cure the virus itself. Also I finished reading my book At Risk for are assignment this week and I cried like a little baby. The last half of the book finally went into how Amanda the HIV/AIDS patient felt about the whole thing and it was the same way I would feel if I knew I was going to die. She was scared about dying and if she would be in pain, the other side, and most of all that everyone would eventually forget her. The book ended with her not dying, but getting really really sick and having to go to the hospital so one could only assume she did die. At the beginning of this week I interviewed three of my old fellow CNA students about HIV/AIDS and was in shock about how uneducated they still were about the subject. One of the questions was what stigmas they associated with HIV/AIDS and two of my friends said someone who is a sexual person, careless, and someone who abuses drugs. This was sad to me, but it just emphasizes the need for education on the subject of HIV/AIDS.

Since last week I talked about two drugs working together for a strong impact on HIV/AIDS I decided it would be best to talk about one drug that has multiple chemicals working for a strong impact on HIV/AIDS. EPZICOM is just that, it is one pill that contains both abacavir and lamivudine, which are two NRTIs. According to the HIV/AIDS article NRTI stands for Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor and stops the replication of HIV by interfering with the reverse transcriptase enzyme, ultimately stopping the production of HIVs viral DNA. According to EPZICOM's homepage, "68% of patients taking a regimen with EPZICOM had their viral load become undetectable in less than one year. On top of that, patients had a 93% increase in their T-cell count." Just like the Norvir combination EPZICOM works by lowering the viral load and increasing the T-cell count, but EPZICOM is more convenient due to the fact that it is just one pill. Unfortunately, HIV can develop a drug resistance and if the patient does not recognize the problem soon enough it might be too late to start a new drug regimen in time.

Reference

ViiV Healthcare. (2010) EPZICOM Backbone Therapy. Retrieved(Feb, 15, 2010). http://www.epzicom.com/about-epzicom/backbone-hiv-therapy.html

The New York Times Company. (2010) About.com:AIDS/HIV Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor (NRTI). Retrieved(Feb, 17,2010). http://aids.about.com/od/hivaidslettern/g/nrt/.htm

Week 3

Hello everyone,

Hope you all are having fun reading my blogs! This week I became very ill with some sort of infection similar to strep, but it is not. The doctor prescribed me a very strong antibiotic and according to my mom last time she was on it she got thrush too. Now I have a pretty week immune system and this illness is hitting me pretty hard this week, but it is opening my eyes as to how worse this infection could really get if I had no immune system. From what I have learned so far, if you have a weak immune system almost any infection can get really serious and lead to pneumonia or meningitis, which can then lead to death. This just showed me that if a HIV/AIDS patient came down with a simple virus it is not just a simple virus anymore it is a time clock. A time clock that keeps ticking away hoping you go to the doctor and get it treated fast before it turns into something worse. One important item I learned this week is that when you have HIV/AIDS every little thing in your life changes, not all for the worse, and becomes quite a bit more difficult.

Also this week we went over a question of the week which covered that Africa does not screen donated blood for HIV/AIDS like we do in the US. I was really amazed and embarrassed that I assumed that most of all Africa would screen all donated blood for HIV/AIDS, because it has been hit the hardest by it. Thankfully there are organizations out there trying to help this problem and collect money to help screen donated blood for HIV/AIDS and other viruses. One organization is the Safe Blood in Africa Foundation, which has already committed to screening one million blood units for HIV/ AIDS, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, and Syphilis. I really hope that soon Africa is able to screen donated blood for HIV/AIDS it would help lower the amount of people with HIV/AIDS even more and would be one step closer to stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS.

In this weeks did you know I am going to talk about a very important item in treating HIV/AIDS patients. A very big percentage of the drugs taken by HIV/AIDS patients are used in synergism. Synergism is the combining of multiple drugs to intensify their effects on a patient. The only good way I know how to explain this is say you have drug A which helps the body 1x and say you have drug B which helps the body 1x, but combined they help the body 3x.

DRUG A DRUG B A+B

1 + 1 = 3

An example of a HIV drug using synergism is Lexiva combined with Norvir. According to the Lexiva homepage it is a protease inhibitor, protease is a chemical that HIV needs to make copies of itself and Lexiva helps by blocking protease. Also according to the Lexiva homepage, Lexiva not only blocks protease, but helps your immune system by increasing your CD4T cell count. Now Norvir is used in synergy with Lexiva, according to Lexiva Norvir increases the amount of Lexiva in the body and further helps decrease the viral load and increase the immune system. Lexiva and Norvir help make HIV/AIDS manageable and is not a cure, but also helps us in finding a cure for HIV/AIDS.

References

Safe Blood for Africa Foundation(2008). Safe Blood for Africa. Retrieved(2/10/2010). http://www.safebloodforafrica.org/

ViiV Healthcare Group(2010). Lexiva. Retrieved(2/10/2010). http://www.lexiva.com/index.html

HIV/AIDS week two!

Hello everyone,



Hope you all are doing well this week. This week I am halfway through this book I am reading for this class. It is called At Risk by Alice Hoffman. It is about a twelve year old girl named Amanda who has AIDS due to a contaminated blood transfusion, because they were not screened. Right now in the book Amanda was just diagnosed with AIDS and the family is taking it really hard. Amanda's father Ivan is blaming her doctor and is extremely angry and aggressive. Polly, Amanda's mother is now doing everything she can possibly do to make Amanda happy and is constantly doing everything thing with the thought that Amanda does not have enough time left in the back of her head. And Charlie, Amanda's brother is mad at Amanda for ruining his life, due to the controversies AIDS is now causing at his school and between his friendship. Multiple students' parents are pulling there kids out of school in fear of their children catching AIDS and the students staying at the school and scared to use the bathroom or sit by Charlie and Amanda in fear of AIDS too. Parts of the neighbor hood are staying away, and other parts trying to help. Now, this book sets place between the 70s and 80s, and the main reason Amanda's AIDS is causing such a hysteria is due to the fact of uneducation, and unfortunately some are not educated about AIDS at all now too. This story is really eye opening to me about how tough HIV/AIDS is on a child, and it also disturbs me on how some parents in the neighborhood are acting like Amanda chose to have this disease and if she coughs on them they will catch it. This really does help show that education is one of the main factors in the prevention of the spreading of HIV/AIDS.



Also this week my class was instructed to research a HIV/AIDS organization based outside the US. My choice is the Aids foundation of South Africa (AFSA) and is the first non-government organization in South Africa. According to the AFSA website, their main focus is to improve the health to target sites by providing mentoring and support through donor's help. The AFSA also does research and reports the statistics they find.
www.aids.org/za



Did you Know:



This week I decided to talk about different HIV preventive therapies from mother to child including, HAART (Highly Active Antiretrovial Therapy), Nevirapine, and Zidovudine. HAART is used to prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child while postnatal. According to the Science Daily HAART effectively reduces the transmission of HIV while breastfeeding up to 82%, and most of the 12% that was ineffective was, because the mothers either did not take the medicine regularly or had a too high CD4T count. Nevirapine and Zidovudine are given at the beginning of labor and up to two weeks after birth and are effective in preventing transmission up to 67%. All three of these drugs work by turning off an enzyme in HIV that prevents HIV from attaching to CD4T cells and eventually the HIV dies. It is amazing that we have such high percentages in preventing transmission from mother to child now and is sign of great things to come.