Can you give someone with HIV/AIDS more CD4 cells?
If someone with HIV/AIDS just has a low amount of cd4 cells why can't you just inject them with more?
Infectious Diseases - 2 Answers
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1 :
there white blood cells would take them out .
2 :
Because their body would not be able to produce more white cells still. And eventually the HIV will adapt to the new cells and infect them as well. However, the answer may yet lie in CD4 cells. They are studying the cells in people like prostitutes where they are exposed to HIV daily, but have yet to contract the virus. Many of these CD4 cells lack the receptor HIV uses.
3 :
Read this and you will understand more. A BRIEF HISTORY OF AIDS In the early 80's, doctors started seeing more and more people with suppressed immune systems coming into emergency rooms with several opportunistic infections. These were primarily gay men and intravenous drug users. There was panic within the gay community and in the general population as more and more people began dying of what was called AIDS: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. In 1984, Robert Gallo, a research scientist working for the National Institute of Health (NIH), announced in a press conference that he had discovered the probable cause of AIDS, and that it was a retrovirus later called HIV: Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Without having published his findings for peer review he announced this to the press. The media immediately ran with it, and people began demanding funding into research into HIV, all based on the assumption that HIV is a sexually-transmitted pathogen that causes AIDS. The gay community especially rallied and pushed for more AIDS funding and better education about 'safe sex'. In 1987 a drug called AZT was approved by the FDA for the treatment of AIDS, and this began a multi-billion dollar industry. RETROVIRUSES DO NOT CAUSE DISEASE HIV is a normal retrovirus. Its genetic composition does not differ very much from other retroviruses. No retrovirus has ever been shown to cause disease outside of a lab. Unlike ordinary viruses, retroviruses do not kill their host cells. Retroviruses occur naturally inside of the cells of many animals, including humans. Retroviruses are seen by many scientists to be naturally occurring parts of our cells. Retroviruses are not sexually-transmitted, but they are passed from mother to child. Retroviruses had been studied by the NIH extensively throughout the 70's in hopes that they would find a retrovirus that caused cancer. Because retroviruses do not kill cells, they were a perfect candidate for cancer, in which cells do not die but instead multiply rapidly. Millions of dollars went into all of this research into retroviruses with nothing to show for it. Gallo himself tried to prove more than once that he had found a disease-causing retrovirus, only to be debunked by the scientific community. When AIDS appeared, Gallo and the NIH were already looking for a disease that they could blame on a retrovirus, to justify all of their wasted funding. HIV HAS NEVER BEEN FOUND HIV has never been isolated from human blood. What AIDS researchers call isolation of HIV is the finding of certain chemicals and enzymatic activity that they claim indicates the presence of HIV. They find proteins and genetic material thought to come from HIV, or they find reverse transcriptase activity. But none of these proteins, RNA strands, or enzyme activities are unique to HIV. What most AIDS scientists research in their labs is a lab artifact. It is HIV that is created and grown in a lab, and it is thought to be the same thing that causes AIDS when it infects people. THE TEST DOES NOT FIND HIV The test for HIV does not look for an actual virus in your blood. It looks for antibodies that will react with a set of proteins that are produced by HIV. But none of these proteins are specific to HIV. Antibodies in the blood resulting from other conditions can cross-react with the proteins in the HIV test. Blood must be diluted before being tested for HIV. Without dilution, all blood samples would test positive for HIV because we all have some antibodies that will cross-react with the test. There are at least 66 factors that are known to cause false positive results on an HIV test, including other infections, drug use, and receptive anal sex. Having unprotected receptive anal sex causes your body to produce antibodies in response to semen. These antibodies to semen can cross-react with the proteins in the HIV test, producing a false positive result. In addition, people of African descent have a higher probability of testing false positive, because they naturally have a greater variety of antibodies in their blood. NO GOLD STANDARD FOR HIV TESTING HIV tests are not standardized. This is because HIV has never been isolated from human blood, so there is no way to know how specific the tests are to HIV infection. The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) does not approve a single HIV test for the diagnosis of HIV infection. There are a variety of tests, and the results are interpreted differently in different countries. So the same sample of blood could test positive in the United States while testing negative in Europe. Another more expensive HIV test is the viral load test. Viral load testing makes use of PCR: polymerase chain reaction. It takes a very small amount of genetic material and makes enough copies of it that you can detect it. Dr. Kary Mullis, who won a Nobel prize for inventing PCR, is among the scientists who say that HIV does not cause AIDS. He claims that viral load testing is a misuse of PCR. PCR does not find isolated virus in the blood. It finds pieces of RNA strands thought to belong to HIV. PRESENCE OF ANTIBODIES MEANS IMMUNITY Usually, if you test positive for antibodies that means that your immune system has effectively fought off a pathogen and you now have immunity. But with the HIV test, the logic is reversed. Instead of meaning that you now have immunity to HIV, testing positive is said to mean that you are infected and your immune system has failed to neutralize the virus. The great hope for many who believe that HIV causes AIDS is that researchers will some day develop a vaccine. But vaccines work by causing your body to produce antibodies specific to a pathogen. If a vaccine for HIV was created, everyone who had the vaccine would then test positive for HIV on the non-specific antibody tests now in use. AZT SUPPRESSES THE IMMUNE SYSTEM The original drug used to treat people with AIDS, called AZT, was not created for AIDS treatment. AZT was originally developed in the 70's as a chemotherapy drug for cancer patients, but it was not approved because it was determined to be too toxic. Chemotherapy for cancer patients is limited to a certain duration, while AZT and similar drugs are prescribed to AIDS patients for the rest of their lives. The study that lead to FDA approval for AZT has now been shown to have been fraudulent. The package for AZT says: "TOXIC. Toxic by inhalation, in contact with skin and if swallowed. Wear suitable protective clothing." Among other side effects, AZT destroys the bone marrow of the body. The reason doctors see an initial rise in their patients' T cell count after taking AZT is because the bone marrow is where T cells are produced. AZT destroys the bone marrow and this releases more T cells from the marrow into the blood. Prolonged use of AZT has been shown to suppress the immune system and lower T cell counts. About 95% of AIDS-related deaths have occurred since the release of AZT. ANTIRETROVIRAL SIDE EFFECT LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH The newer protease inhibitors used in combo therapy are also a type of chemotherapy. They work by preventing the replication of genetic material belonging to HIV. But these proteins are not specific to HIV, and the protease inhibitors do not exclusively target HIV. The highest cause of death today for people with AIDS is liver failure. Liver failure is not an AIDS-defining illness, but it is a known side-effect of the protease inhibitors. AIDS patients can see the disappearance of some symptoms while taking the drug cocktails. This is because the drugs they are taking are global poisons that kill many microbes in the body that may be pathogenic, such as bacteria and other viruses. ANTIRETROVIRALS NOT PROVEN TO IMPROVE HEALTH The drug companies claim that the release of protease inhibitors in 1996 was responsible for decreased deaths due to AIDS. But deaths from AIDS had already begun a declining trend three years before in 1993, and the introduction of protease inhibitors did not significantly alter this trend. Studies are no longer comparing AIDS drugs with a placebo. Now when they test a new antiretroviral drug they compare a group taking the new drug with a group that is taking the older drugs. There are no studies being done comparing the difference in health between people taking the AIDS medications and people who are not taking the drugs, though many HIV positive people lead healthy lives free of disease for many years, without taking AIDS medication. CDC REDEFINES AIDS TO INCREASE NUMBERS AIDS statistics can be very misleading. This is because of the many definitions for AIDS that have been used by different countries and at different times. Originally, in the United States you had to test HIV positive and have one or more of the AIDS-defining illnesses to be counted as somebody with AIDS. In 1993 the Center for Disease Control (CDC) expanded this definition to include anyone who tested positive for HIV and had a T cell count of under 200. This nearly tripled the perceived number of AIDS cases in the US. Many of the people who have AIDS by this definition are perfectly healthy, and would not be considered to have AIDS if they moved to Canada. AIDS IN AFRICA CAUSED BY POVERTY Today we are told that ridiculously large numbers of people in Africa are HIV positive and will die of AIDS unless treated. These statistics are not counts of people who have actually tested positive. It is an estimation generated from a sample population. The sample population is primarily pregnant women, who are the ones who get priority for medical treatment in poor countries. But pregnancy is known to be a source for false positive results on HIV tests. And people of African descent in general are more likely to test false positive. The World Health Organization does not require a positive HIV test for the diagnosis of AIDS in Africa. All that is required is a certain number of symptoms. But all of these symptoms can also be explained by malnutrition, malaria, and tuberculosis, conditions that have been health risks for Africans long before the invention of AIDS. The health of poor Africans would undoubtedly be improved with better food and sanitation. But funding is now being geared towards delivery of toxic AIDS medications to Africans rather than for these basic essentials. AIDS DEFINES ITSELF Clearly many people have died in this country and elsewhere as the result of a suppressed immune system. But the 29 AIDS-defining illnesses are not new illnesses, and they all have previously documented causes and treatments. Diagnosis of AIDS now works like a formula. If you have pneumonia and you test HIV negative, you are told you have pneumonia. If you have pneumonia and you test HIV positive, you are told you have AIDS and you are treated with toxic AIDS drugs. For those people who are truly immune suppressed, there are other possible explanations for this phenomenon, and many safe non-toxic therapies. DRUGS AND MALNUTRITION CAUSE AIDS If the true condition of AIDS is a suppressed immune system unable to fight off opportunistic infections, there are many other factors that can cause this. Drugs such as cocaine and crystal methane are known to suppress the immune system. These drugs were used extensively by many gay men in the 1970's and 1980's. Intravenous drug users who have AIDS are said to be immune suppressed due to HIV, rather than due to the drug they have been injecting. Corticosteroids and some antibiotics, often prescribed to drug addicts and promiscuous gay men, are also immune suppressive. Blood given to hemophiliacs and other transplant recipients used to be treated with immune suppressing agents. Now with a new way to treat this blood, AIDS among blood recipients has declined. Despite predictions of a global epidemic, AIDS cases in the United States have remained confined to its original primary risk groups: promiscuous gay men and intravenous drug users. In the gay party scene, drug use, malnutrition, and sleep deprivation continue to be high risk factors for immune deficiency. POPPERS CAUSE KAPOSI'S SARCOMA Kaposi's Sarcoma is one of the AIDS-indicator diseases, but it primarily occurs in gay men and not other AIDS groups. Nitrite inhalants or poppers, used extensively by gay men in the 70's and 80's, have been shown to cause Kaposi's Sarcoma (KS). KS is a cancer of the blood vessels. Nitrites are known carcinogens. KS is usually seen in gay men around the face, mouth, and in the lungs, all sites of contact with nitrite fumes. There are many recorded incidents of KS in HIV-negative gay men who used poppers. As the use of poppers decreased in the 90's, the incidence of KS also decreased. Poppers are still used by many gay men. FEAR ALONE CAN CAUSE AIDS Fear and anxiety is another factor that can suppress the immune system. Stress releases cortisol in the body. This cortisol is used to help break down tissues for the release of energy needed in a fight or flight situation. But prolonged stress and anxiety creates abnormally high levels of cortisol in the body. Cortisol has been shown to suppress the immune system and decrease T cell counts. Irregular sleep or lack of sleep also increases cortisol levels. Gay men who face discrimination and hatred for their sexuality can experience chronic fear and anxiety. Intravenous drug users also face a lot of chronic fear and paranoia as part of their addiction. Testing positive for HIV itself can create huge amounts of fear in the person being diagnosed.
4 :
It's very sad there's so much misinformation and ignorance, so people would only get sicker and the incidence of new cases can only increase. (I'm not saying this because of you, but for other responders...). Back to your question. CD4 cells are programmed in your body and they are very specific. The best way to increse the CD4 cells is to kill the virus so it becomes latent and the cells can naturally reproduce. Cd4 cells are not like red cells that you can just tranfuse. If you get cells from another person they may not only be killed by your body (or in large ammount theoretically attack your body) they would be innactive. They are like soldiers. If you get a soldier from another country hust travelling in yours, he is not going to fight for your country, right, he is just visiting... Back to the HIV thing. HIV not only affects CD4 cells. And CD4 cells are not the only immunity that we have. For example, there are some patients with low CD4 that never recover them but are on medicines and never in their long lifes ( some since the discoveery of AIDS, almost 30 years) had any type of infection or signs of wasting. Some people are diagnosed with high CD4's and still get infections and get sick. CD4 are only amarker. NK cells are another of many types of lymphocytes that play a big role in HIV and immunity. Last but not least, HIV attacks other organs, like heart, brain, liver, kidneys. So the best option we have now are medicines for HIV (antiretrovirals) that by way of deceasing the viral load, give all the cells attacked by the HIv the chance to grow again. (and they do!: I have patients who went from 2 CD4's to more than 500: normal) Good luck and don't listen to people who play with others' misery...
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