Around 25 years ago, doctors in the U.S discovered the first cases of Acquired immune deficiency syndrome, generally known as “AIDS” in San Francisco and New York. Now, 42 million people are suffering from AIDS globally, according to estimation, and the mortality rate is almost 3 million, each year, due to AIDS-related diseases.

AIDS is mainly caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This virus destroys CD4 lymphocyte, which acts as defense cell in the human body. These cells are very essential part of immunity system that wrestles infectious diseases. People infected with this virus become immune deficient and start to get serious infections that they normally wouldn’t.

In such a huge population it is essential to have a HIV test that is quite common now a day. Even you can test your blood for HIV infection via home HIV test kit that is cost effective too.

There are some misconceptions about the spreading of HIV, even in social setup most of us used to keep away the HIV infected human beings as they thought, that the virus can spread through air or touch. It’s totally wrong; HIV requires aqueous media to transmit from one person to another.

The major causes which are spreading HIV include:

• vulnerable oral, vaginal, or anal intercourse
• sharing needles, e.g. needles used to inject drugs or steroids and those used for tattooing

Duration of outbreak

As the number of CD4 cells started to decrease in infected people, he/she presents signs of specific illnesses or diseases that occur in people with HIV infection, then doctors make a diagnosis of AIDS.

According to the researchers, severe signs and symptoms of AIDS may not appear for 10 years or more. Symptoms of AIDS have no specific time to appear and it varies from person to person. You may have seen such HIV infected people which look healthy superficially. Even if the person with the virus has absolutely no symptoms, he or she can transmit the virus to the others. You cannot judge by simply looking at someone either he or she is infected or not.

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