Question: What happens when you get HIV. What does it cause in your body.

Laura Maliszewski answered on 21 Jun 2010:

HIV infects your blood cells (and maybe certain other immune cells, but this is disputed) targeting two main types of white blood cells, Macrophages and T-cells.

The virus replicates rapidly, killing off infected T cells by literally causing them to overfill with virus and explode. Once infected the body raises the alarm as with any other infection and activates the immune system to kill off most of the virus and some of the infected cells. This first phase of infection is called the “burst phase”.

For a while, sometimes for years the body is able to control the infection. Only a small amount of virus replicates and everything seems normal, but the infected person can still transmit the virus to other people through the exchange of bodily fluids. This is called “clinical latency”.

This is different from other viruses like the virus that causes cold sores. That virus becomes truly latent, not producing any new virus at all until triggered. HIV always makes virus, just at very low levels.

At some point, HIV begins to replicate more rapidly. We understand some things about how this happens, but not enough to stop it yet. This causes more T-cells to die. Since T-cells are important for your immune system to function the it is much easier to be come sick. This stage is called “seroconversion” and is marked by “low CD4 T cell levels”.

At this point the person is sick and not able to combat diseases well. Everyday we fight off little infection but people with low numbers of T cells (immunosuppressed people) can’t fight off these infections and they can become very serious, resulting in death from pneumonia or other bacterial infections or something as simple as a bad cold or flu.

There’s a ton more that we know, like how the virus gets into cells, how it replicates and how it gets back otu of cells.

I’d be happy to answer any other questions!