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HIV/AIDS

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Epidemiology

Part of the book series: Statistics for Biology and Health ((SBH))

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Abstract

The disease called AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) results from an infection with either of two retroviruses, HIV-1 or HIV-2 where HIV stands for “Human Immunodeficiency Virus”. The first one is by far more frequent and has caused a pandemic. For simplicity, we shall restrict ourselves to looking at the epidemiology of this infection only, and always write HIV to mean HIV-1.

The epidemiology of HIV/AIDS is determined by several particular traits of the disease. Its mechanism of transmission resembles that of hepatitis B. During a long and almost asymptomatic period the virus destroys the immune system of the infected subject, who finally dies of opportunistic infections . There is no vaccine. Treatment is problematic but has recently made progress.

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Krickeberg, K., Van Trong, P., Thi My Hanh, P. (2019). HIV/AIDS. In: Epidemiology. Statistics for Biology and Health. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16368-6_10

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