AIDS and HIV?

what are ways you can get them besides having sex?? what are symptoms? how do they effect the body? I am just curious is all

The only known way for the HIV virus to be transmitted from one person to another is when it is spread from the inside of an infected person's body to the inside of another person's body. This can happen when infected fluids - such as semen (also known as "***," the fluid released from the penis when a male ejaculates), vaginal fluids, or blood - are passed from one person to another. A person can become infected even if only tiny amounts of these fluids are spread.

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First of all, HIV progresses into AIDS sooner or later. If you've had unprotected sex, go to an AIDS clinic for a free and confidential test. Learn what you can about "windows", a time period in which the infection does not show up in a test.

AIDS break down the body's immune system, which causes all sorts of symptoms from pneumonia, extreme fatigue, blindness, nerve damage, tuberculosis. It's all out there just waiting to invade a sick body.. Long believed to be the result of unprotected sex by penetration, there has been an article in the American Medical Association's publication that an older man contracted AIDS from a bj by an infected hooker.

And it is a hideous death. The face of AIDS is not only the infected person's, but all who love him or her.

Exchange of body fluids. The most common routes of infection are unprotected anal sex, unprotected vaginal sex, and sharing of needles by drug addicts.

Unprotecte oral sex has a much lower, but not zero, chance of transmission. If an infected person ejaculates in your mouth, and you have cold sores, mouth ulcers, bleeding gums, or have recently had mouth surgery, then the risk is high.

HIV is not that easy to contract. It takes a certain amount of HIV viurs particles to be present to infect someone.

Saliva might contain sufficient HIV in a pint of fluid - so the risk there is low.

Around a teaspoon of ejaculate can cause an infection, and just a few drops of blood.

People with damaged immune systems - either through drug use, disease, or the use of immuno-suppressants - are at higher risk in all cases.

HIV normally progresses to AIDS in between 6 months to 20 years. Some HIV infected individuals appear not to progress to AIDS, but this is extremely rare.

HIV infection does not cause any symptoms, other than a flu-like feeling for a couple of weeks; but AIDS sufferers are prone to all kinds of opportunistic infections because their natural immune system has been essentially disabled.

You can get it from sex, dirty needles, or if HIV blood gets into an open wound.

I just got off www.yahoo.com and I clicked on HEALTH then I scrolled down to HIV/AIDS and there is plenty of info there!!!

Call the National AIDS & STD Hotline at

1-800-342-AIDS
and speak to a councelor.
They will be happy to answer all your questions.

>Transmission:
Apart from unprotected sex with an infected partner HIV is transmitted through,
1.Transfusion of infected blood and blood products,
2.Contaminat ed needles and syringes, and
3.From an infected mother to her baby before, during delivery or through breast milk.
>Symptoms:
A few weeks after the virus enters the body, some people have flu-like symptoms such as fever, body ache, and headache, (every infected person may not experience these). These symptoms disappear after a while, and then there is a long phase of 3 years to 12 years which is asymptomatic.
>HIV and its effect the body:
Once HIV enters the body, it gets attached to a type of white blood cell called T lymphocyte (which is the T cell in the human body's protection against infections). The RNA (genetic material) of the virus then gets converted to DNA (genetic material) by an enzyme that the virus produces. This viral DNA then gets incorporated into the DNA of the human cell (T lymphocyte), and remains there for the lifetime of that cell. This infected cell now becomes a virus factory producing more viruses (HIV) which bud out of the cell, attack new T lymphocytes, and destroy them. Over a period of years, the T cell count of the infected person drops to a critical level and the individual develops many opportunistic infection and hence is then said to have AIDS. .