Aids 2

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from Africa and the Caribbean, and some of the infant children born to women at risk.
All these varied people had one thing in common: almost absent levels of the white blood cells called T helper cells that keep the immune system functioning properly. Their defective immune systems left them vulnerable to one serious health problem after another. Although many problems could be treated, and even cured, others immediately arose. After their first serious problem, people were said to have AIDS, and once diagnosed with AIDS most survived for only a year or two.
By 1984, the virus called H.I.V. was firmly established as the cause of the mysterious syndrome. H.I.V. can pass from one person to another through sexual contact or contact with infected blood, settle into their T helper cells, and progressively destroy them.
A blood test to detect carriers of H.I.V. was released in the spring of 1985. For the first time people could be tested to see if they were at risk for developing ...

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that came with many side effects, the drug by itelf did not work very well to treat people sick with AIDS, or to prevent healthy H.I.V.-infected people from getting sick. But it did prove to be extremely important in slowing one phase of the epidemic: in 1994 a study showed that AZT was very effective in keeping H.I.V. infection from passing from mother to baby, and numbers of H.I.V. infected newborns began to decline.
Meanwhile, other anti-H.I.V. drugs slowly followed AZT onto drugstore shelves, and doctors began to treat patients with combinations of the most potent ones. In 1996, a set of powerful drugs called the protease inhibitors was released, and the picture of AIDS in the ...

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