Acronym

Singular AIDS

Plural -

AIDS

1. (pathology) acquired immune deficiency syndrome

Synonyms

• (obsolete): GRID

Related terms

• HIV

Derived terms

• ARC

Anagrams

• dais
• IADS
• said, Said

Czech

Noun

AIDS m.

1. AIDS

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

This condition progressively reduces the effectiveness of the immune system and leaves individuals susceptible to opportunistic infections and tumors. HIV is transmitted through direct contact of a mucous membrane or the bloodstream with a bodily fluid containing HIV, such as blood, semen, vaginal fluid, preseminal fluid, and breast milk.

This transmission can involve anal, vaginal or oral sex, blood transfusion, contaminated hypodermic needles, exchange between mother and baby during pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding or other exposure to one of the above bodily fluids.

AIDS is now a pandemic. In 2007, it was estimated that 33.2 million people lived with the disease worldwide, and that AIDS killed an estimated 2.1 million people, including 330,000 children. Over three-quarters of these deaths occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, retarding economic growth and destroying human capital.

Genetic research indicates that HIV originated in west-central Africa during the late nineteenth or early twentieth century. AIDS was first recognized by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1981 and its cause, HIV, identified in the early 1980s.

Although treatments for AIDS and HIV can slow the course of the disease, there is currently no vaccine or cure. Antiretroviral treatment reduces both the mortality and the morbidity of HIV infection, but these drugs are expensive and routine access to antiretroviral medication is not available in all countries. Due to the difficulty in treating HIV infection, preventing infection is a key aim in controlling the AIDS pandemic, with health organizations promoting safe sex and needle-exchange programmes in attempts to slow the spread of the virus.

AIDS or Aids, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, is a collection of symptoms and infections in humans resulting from the specific damage to the immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

Sourced

• In the end one cannot avoid the conclusion that AIDS unites certain human themes — homosexuality, sexual disease, and death — about which society actively resists enlightenment. These are things that we are unwilling to address or even think about. We don't want to understand them. We would rather fear them.
  • Martin Amis, "Making Sense of AIDS" (1985), in The Moronic Inferno and Other Visits to America (1986)

• As individual and unpredictable as this illness seems to be, the one thing I found I could say with certainty was this: AIDS makes things more intensely what they already are.
  • Mark Doty Heaven’s Cost

• On December 22,1986, finding I was body positive, I set myself a target: I would disclose my secret and survive Margaret Thatcher. I did. Now I have set my sights on the millennium and a world where we are all equal.
  • Derek Jarman At Your Own Risk

• There are many who wish to believe that premarital sex causes venereal diseases, that homosexuality causes AIDS... This is simply not true; infectious diseases are caused by infectious agents.
  • P. Skrabanek, "Preventive Medicine and Morality," Lancet 1 (8473)(1986): 143.

Unsourced

• It is possible to have a generation without HIV/AIDS - we are the ones to make it possible.
  • Graça Machel, wife of former South African leader Nelson Mandela

• And the danger is - and it's happening - is we're seeing an incredibly big rise amongst young gay people, young heterosexual people as far as catching HIV, which is, you know, in an educated country like this or in Britain, it's frightening.
  • Elton John

From Wikiquote under the GNU Free Documentation License.
Sat Jan 16 01:40:58 2010