It can be helpful to understand what’s really going on with HIV and how medicines used during treatment can fight HIV infection.
Watch this video clip to understand more about the life cycle of HIV.
The following presentation will also give you information you need to understand how HIV works in the body.
To survive and grow, the HIV virus must invade healthy cells in your body. HIV likes to invade CD4 cells. Your body has billions of CD4 cells. These cells help your body’s immune system protect you against germs and viruses that can make you sick. Imagine that every CD4 cell in your body is a factory. Each CD4 cell factory makes substances that protect your body against disease. To spread and grow, HIV must take control of the factory.
HIV has a special chemical to unlock and enter the CD4 cell. The chemical is like a key on the surface of the virus.
Once inside the CD4 cell, HIV uses a chemical called reverse transcriptase to hide (disguise) itself. The disguised HIV uses a chemical called integrase as a key to get inside the factory’s command center.
Inside the CD4 command center (nucleus), substances are being made that tell the immune system to protect the body against disease.
In the command center, substances are made to protect the body against disease. The disguised HIV takes over the command center and changes the cell’s instructions. The CD4 cell is told to make HIV parts. The cell no longer makes substances that help the body protect itself from disease.
The infected CD4 cell is now an HIV factory, making new virus parts. Another kind of chemical called a protease cuts out and puts together (assembles) the new virus parts into finished copies of HIV. These new copies of HIV leave the cell and find other CD4 cells to invade. This process repeats itself over and over again.
Protease assembles the new parts into new copies of the HIV virus.
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