Aids byname and acronym of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome

Groups and subtypes of HIV

Genetic studies have led to a general classification system for HIV that is primarily based on the degree of similarity in viral gene sequence. The two major classes of HIV are HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is divided into three groups, known as group M (main group), group O (outlier group), and group N (new group). Worldwide, HIV-1 group M causes the majority of HIV infections, and it is further subdivided into subtypes A through K, which differ in expression of viral genes, virulence, and mechanisms of transmission. In addition, some subtypes combine with one another to create recombinant subtypes. HIV-1 group M subtype B is the virus that spread from Africa to Haiti and eventually to the United States. Pandemic forms of subtype B are found in North and South America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Subtypes A, C, and D are found in sub-Saharan Africa, although subtypes A and C are also found in Asia and some other parts of the world. Most other subtypes of group M are generally located in specific regions of Africa, South America, or Central America.
In 2009 a new strain of HIV-1 was discovered in a woman from Cameroon. The virus was closely related to a strain of SIV found in wild gorillas. Researchers placed the new virus into its own group, HIV-1 group P, because it was unique from all other types of HIV-1. It was unclear whether the newly identified virus causes disease in humans.
HIV-2 is divided into groups A through E, with subtypes A and B being the most relevant to human infection. HIV-2, which is found primarily in western Africa, can cause AIDS, but it does so more slowly than HIV-1. There is some evidence that HIV-2 may have arisen from a form of SIV that infects African green monkeys.

Transmission

HIV is transmitted by the direct transfer of bodily fluids—such as blood and blood products, semen and other genital secretions, or breast milk—from an infected person to an uninfected person. The primary means of transmission worldwide is sexual contact with an infected individual. HIV frequently is spread among intravenous drug users who share needles or syringes. Prior to the development of screening procedures and heat-treating techniques that destroy HIV in blood products, transmission also occurred through contaminated blood products; many people with hemophilia contracted HIV in that way. Today the risk of contracting HIV from a blood transfusion is extremely small. In rare cases transmission to health care workers may occur as a result of an accidental stick by a needle that was used to obtain blood from an infected person.
The virus can be transmitted across the placenta or through the breast milk from mother to infant; administration of antiretroviral medications to both the mother and the infant about the time of birth reduces the chance that the child will be infected with HIV (see below HIV and pregnancy). Antiretroviral therapy can reduce the risk of transmission from infected persons to their uninfected sexual partners by some 96 percent when prescribed immediately upon diagnosis. Moreover, if infected persons adhere to antiretroviral therapy over the long term, their HIV viral load can eventually become undetectable, which means that the virus cannot be transmitted by sexual contact; this phenomenon is referred to as “undetectable = untransmittable” (U = U).
HIV is not spread by coughing, sneezing, or casual contact (e.g., shaking hands). HIV is fragile and cannot survive long outside the body. Therefore, direct transfer of bodily fluids is required for transmission. Other sexually transmitted diseases, such as syphilis, genital herpes, gonorrhea, and chlamydia, increase the risk of contracting HIV through sexual contact, probably through the genital lesions that they cause.