Information about HIV/AIDS

HIV is an acronym for Human Immunodeficiency Virus. HIV causes AIDS, which stands for Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. This is the difference between HIV and AIDS: HIV is the virus which causes AIDS, AIDS is the syndrome that develops as a result of being infected with HIV.

HIV is like other viruses, such as influenza, chicken pox, and measles, in that the virus cells cannot reproduce on their own and must infect other cells to make copies of the virus. Viruses accomplish this by hijacking the cellular machinery of host cells, tricking the host cells into making copies of the DNA of the virus instead of the host cell's own DNA.

HIV belongs to the class of viruses called retroviruses, a type of ribonucleic acid (RNA) viruses that attack cells in a host by encoding the virus RNA into the DNA of the host cell. Specifically, HIV is classified in the sub-group of retroviruses called lentiviruses, meaning 'slow viruses'. Lentiviruses are termed as 'slow viruses' because of the long period of time between initial infection and the onslaught of serious symptoms.

HIV attacks the cells of the immune system in an infected hosts, and the course of HIV infection causes severe damage to the immune system, eventually causing AIDS (hence, 'immunodeficiency'). There are other lentiviruses which affect animals other than humans, such as feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV) in cats and simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) in non-human primates.

Resources

Wikipedia entries for HIV and AIDS

These Wikipedia articles provide a wealth of detailed information about HIV and AIDS. Both articles are fairly scientific, but are a good place to start to form a basis of knowledge about HIV and AIDS.