Lecture 40 - Viral Diseases

Hepatitis B
A serum form of hepatitis, which occurs in blood. --

Hepatits C
A classic non-A, non-B Hepatitis that is transmitted by blood. There is no antibody production until 70-80 days after the infection, and is extremely hard to detect. --

Heptatitis D (Delta Agent)
Only infectious when transmitted with hepatitis B, and causes increased liver damage when compared to hepatitis B alone. The hepatitis B vaccine

Hepatitis E
Infectious non-A non-B Hepatitis, which means that it is transmitted through the fecal-oral route. Hepatitis E patients have similar

Hepatitis G
Co-infection with Hepatits G with Hepatitis C or HIV will slow down the progression of the latter two.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)
HIV is an RNA retrovirus, which uses a reverse-transcriptase to make DNA from their RNA. HIV1 is the most common strain of HIV, and HIV2 is a much milder strain in Africa, which doesn't kill as fast. HIV incubates for about 8 years, and causes AIDS. There are two receptors on the white blood cell that the spike can fit into to infect the WBC.

There are 45 million cases worldwide.

Transmission
Transmitted by blood, unprotected sexual intercourse, and parental. The main way is by sex, and another major way is by the mother's placenta (30%) or breast milk (4%). In semen and vaginal secretions, there are 10-50 virus particles in every mL of the fluid. In blood, there are 1000 to 100,000 virus particles/mL of fluid.

Stages of Infection
Category A lasts for the first 3 years, and shows an initial infection similar to mononucleosis, and is then asymptomatic. However, the paatient is still contagious at this stage.

Category B is during the 4th to 8th year of the infection, and is caracterized by constantly swollen lymph nodes and Candida albicans infections.

Category C is AIDS, and is caracterized by bacterial infections such as Mycobacterium avium, viral infections such as herpes Zoster, herpes simplex, and CMV, protozoan infections such as toxoplasmosis, which causes encephalitis, and fungal infections such as Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia, Cryptococcus neoformans, and Penicillium marneffei.

The top 3 infection in SE Asia are Mycobacterium avium, Cryptococcus neoformans, and Penicillium marneffei.

Treatment
To prevent the virus for binding to the white blood cell, Maraviroc binds to the CCR5 co-receptors that certain strains of HIV bind to on the white blood cells. However, other strains of HIV can bind to