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From: rob@mtdiablo.Concord.CA.US (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: sci.med.aids
Subject: Re: Time to illness
Message-ID: <1991Jan16.223711.13715@cs.ucla.edu>
Date: 16 Jan 91 16:08:18 GMT
References: <1991Jan15.174741.14099@cs.ucla.edu>
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In article <1991Jan15.174741.14099@cs.ucla.edu> liz@ai.mit.edu (Liz A. Highleyman) writes:
>I was under the impression that the time between infection with HIV and
>the development of illness was somewhere in the area of 5 years.

A significant number of people have been infected but not ill for 10 years.

>  Yet
>I have also heard that people who received transfusions of infected
>blood (early in the epidemic) were known to get sick within a few months.
>How can this be?

They got a relatively large "dose" of the virus?

>  Is it taking longer and longer for people to develop
>OIs?

Improved treatments is probably a huge factor here.

>  Does this indicate that HIV is perhaps becoming less virulent?

There is evidence that differing strains have differing virulence.
(This is a big reason why people who are already infected should
engage in safe sex even with each other:  to protect
against getting infected by a more virulent strain of HIV.)
-- 
Rob Bernardo					Mt. Diablo Software Solutions
email: rob@mtdiablo.Concord.CA.US		phone: (415) 827-4301