Abstract: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a virus that causes defects in the human immune system. In 1981, the human immunodeficiency virus was first discovered in the United States. It is a lentivirus that infects cells of the human immune system and is a type of retrovirus. Nearly 12 million people have been killed worldwide, and more than 30 million people have been infected by HIV. In 2004, an estimated 35.9 to 44.3 million people worldwide lived with the human immunodeficiency virus, in which between 430 and 6.4 million were new infections, and between 2.8 and 3.5 million people died of AIDS. These figures are growing, with East Asia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia growing fastest. Due to the diversified transmission routes, strong concealment, long incubation period and high mortality rate, there are still no effective vaccine prevention and cure drugs, and the prevention and treatment work is very difficult. AIDS is one of the key diseases in the world, and prevention and control is a public health issue of global concern. AIDS testing is an important part of prevention and treatment. The method of detecting viral antigens and antibodies in body fluids of HIV-infected persons is convenient to operate and easy to popularize, and antibody detection is particularly common. However, the determination of HIV P24 antigen and viral genes has become an increasingly important place in the detection and importance of HIV infection. Anti-HIV antibodies in serum are an indirect indicator of HIV infection. According to its main scope of application, existing anti-HIV antibody detection methods can be divided into screening tests and confirmatory tests. This article focuses on the serious damage caused by HIV to humans and the different methods of detecting anti-HIV antibodies.
Keywords: anti-HIV antibody, antibody detection, treatment
uSerious damage to the human body caused by HIV
HIV makes it difficult for the body’s immune system to resist its infestation and develop specific therapeutic drugs and preventive vaccines. HIV directly invades the body’s immune system and destroys cellular and humoral immunity. It is mainly found in the body fluids and various organs of infected people and patients. It can be transmitted through the exchange of body fluids containing HIV or organ transplantation.
²Eroding various cells
HIV has been shown to be a virus that is T4 lymphocytes and neurotropic cells. HIV enters human blood by skin rupture or mucous membranes, mainly attacking and destroying target cells T4 lymphocytes, causing T4 cells to lose their original normal immune function. When the T4 cells that activate the immune response are almost completely eliminated by HIV, the number of T4 cell-suppressing cells is greatly increased. As a result, the patient’s immune function is completely depleted, creating extremely favorable conditions for opportunistic infection.
With an affinity for nerve cells, HIV can invade the nervous system and cause damage to brain tissue, or secondary conditional infections, finally leading to various central nervous system diseases.
²Invalidating antibodies
When HIV enters the human body, it is first swallowed by macrophages. But HIV quickly changes the acidic environment of certain parts of macrophages, creating conditions suitable for its survival. Then it enters T-CD4 lymphocytes to multiply. Finally, the latter immune cells are completely destroyed. The HIV envelope protein is prone to antigenic variation, and the original antibody loses its effect, making the neutralizing antibody unable to perform its proper function. In the latent infection stage, the HIV provirus is integrated into the host cell genome, and the immune system ignores HIV from being recognized by the immune system, and cannot be eliminated.
²Promoting cancer
Like other retroviruses, when reverse transcriptase uses viral RNA as a template to synthesize DNA which is integrated into the DNA of the host cell, HIV-activating oncogenes can cause cancerous transformation of cells. Especially when cellular immunity is destroyed and immune surveillance is lost, cancer changes of cells are prone to occur.
uIntroduction to anti-HIV antibody detection methods
²Screening test
Screening tests are mainly used to screen blood donors, therefore requiring easy operation, low cost, and high sensitivity and specificity. In 2012, ELISA was the world’s main screening method, with a few particle agglutination reagents and rapid ELISA reagents. The ELISA has high sensitivity and specificity, and is easy to operate. It only needs to be equipped with a microplate reader and a plate washer in the laboratory. It is especially suitable for large-scale screening in the laboratory.
Particle agglutination test is another simple and convenient operation method with low cost and high sensitivity, which can be judged by the naked eye. It is especially suitable for use in developing countries or a large number of blood donors. The disadvantage is that fresh samples must be used.
The Dot-blot assay developed in the late 1980s is a rapid ELISA method. The method is extremely simple and short-lived. The whole process is mostly within 5–10 minutes or even 3 minutes but the method is much more expensive than conventional ELISA and particle agglutination reagents.
In addition, RPR detection is one of the most effective screening test methods for serum syphilis antibody detection. It can also detect the reactive hormone in serum of patients’ serum, which is anti-lipid antibody.
²Confirmatory test
The most commonly used screening test positive serum is Western Blot (WB), which is only suitable as a confirmatory experiment due to its relatively long window period, slightly less sensitivity, and high cost. With the increased sensitivity of the third and fourth generation HIV diagnostic reagents, WB gradually can’t meet its requirements as a confirmatory experiment.
Another type of screening confirmation method approved by the FDA is the Immunofluorescence-Test (IFA). IFA is less expensive than WB with relatively simple operation, of which the whole process can be completed within 1–1.5 hours. But it requires expensive fluorescence detectors and experienced professionals to observe the results of the evaluation, and the results of the experiments cannot be preserved for a long time. The FDA recommended that the final result of a blood donor who cannot be determined by WB is based on a negative or positive IFA, not on a standard for blood.
uA potentially effective treatment to remove the virus
In July 2014, researchers in Philadelphia, USA discovered a way to completely remove HIV from human cells. In a study published in the National Science Academic Process Journal, researchers reports that firstly a nuclease DNA cleavage enzyme binds to a target chain called ribonucleic acid, which in turn begins to hunt down and eventually remove the HIV-1 viral genome. After removal, the cell’s genetic repair process begins to take over the entire process, welding the damaged ends, resulting in a virus-free cell.
Since the HIV-1 virus cannot be eliminated by the immune system, the disease is cured by the above similar method.. These molecular weapons can also be used as vaccines, and cells armed with nuclease-ribonucleic acid have been confirmed to be free from HIV infection.
References
[1] World Health Organization. WHO HIV updates: global epidemic and progresss in scale up and policy uptake [EB/OL].