Nearly 40 million people worldwide have contracted the HIV or AIDS virus. Frighteningly, it is estimated that more than half of those people are unaware that they have contracted the virus and are likely to pass it to another person. Considering the deadly implications of this behavior more education is needed worldwide to conquer this outbreak.
One reason why HIV is so deadly is its ability to compromise the human immune system. "T-helper cells" or CD4+ T cells are crucial to the immune response. They are responsible for signaling other cells in the immune system to come respond to infection. Without these cell functioning properly a person is subject to opportunistic infections and often die from them.
One mechanism that the HIV virus uses to destroy helper T-cells is Apoptosis. Normal cell function is disrupted by the virus in an infected cell and can trigger a process known as programmed cell death, or apoptosis. This is the body's attempt to rid itself of the......
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