HIV/AIDS: Overview

AIDS is a chronic, life-threatening condition caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). By damaging or destroying the cells of your immune system, HIV interferes with your body's ability to effectively fight off viruses, bacteria and fungi that cause disease. This makes you more susceptible to certain types of cancers and to opportunistic infections your body would normally resist.

The virus and the infection itself are known as HIV. The term AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) is used to mean the later stages of HIV infection. Thus, the terms HIV infection and AIDS refer to different stages of the same disease.

HIV most commonly spreads by sexual contact with an infected partner. It can also spread through infected blood and shared needles or syringes contaminated with the virus. Untreated women with HIV also can pass the infection to their babies during pregnancy and delivery, and through their breast milk.

In the more than two decades since the first reports of the disease, AIDS has become a global epidemic. Worldwide, an estimated 38 million people are living with HIV, nearly half of them women and girls between the ages of 15 and 24. An estimated 950,000 Americans are currently living with HIV/AIDS, up from 900,000 in 2001.

Despite some progress against AIDS, most experts agree that the epidemic is still in the early stages. Because it seems unlikely that a vaccine will be found soon, hopes for stemming the infection appear to lie for now in education, prevention and treatment.

In industrialized nations, improved treatments have reduced serious complications of the disease and helped prolong life. That is not the case in the developing world, where large numbers of infected people don't have access to adequate treatment.

Used with permission from the Mayo Clinic