Why do AIDS and Avian Influenza and other diseases caused by viruses difficult to treat?

This week protesters marched to US capitol demanding the reauthorization of Ryan White Care Act which aims to promote basic health care services for AIDS victims who lacks basic health care insurance to support medication and other needs to treat the disease.

It is reported that more than 1 million Americans are afflicted with the disease. More and more people are being infected every year and the numbers would continue to rise as people engage in risky behaviors which put them more susceptible to the disease.

Just how the development of AIDS vaccine so hard to device lies on the ever changing form of the virus. Through laboratory test, it was shown that more than one strain of virus is present in an AIDS patient.

This fact provides us with valuable clues to the nature of the AIDS virus and empower us to device treatment which is tailored to how the virus advance on an infected patient.

This works the same way with Avaian Influenza (H5N1) strain. The killer bird flu virus was believed to have already developed the ability to infect humans. Its mutation works in two ways: through antigenic drift and antigenic shift.

Antigenic drift is a small change to the genetic information contained in the virus due to the virus' lack of proofreading ability during genetic replication. Humans are equipped with this competency and allow us to maintain our genetic integrity and discourage unallowable changes.

This small changes creates an invariably small, unique changes to the genetic composition of the virus. This issue is important for it allows us to predict the strain of virus that will more likely to be prevalent in the coming flu season. It will also give local administrators to adjust the compositon of flu vaccines to be given in the coming season.

In contrast, anti-genetic shift works where a virus can interchange or "mate" its genetic composition with another virus species thereby producing a completely different type which in most cases are more virulent (extremely pathogenic or producing severe disease).

The latter definition is of major concern to scientists working on preventing the spread of avian influenza and eventually acquire the necessary mechanism to infect humans through the process enumerated above.

For your additional readings, please visit the following site below:

www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/avian_influenza/en/index.html
www.unaids.org/wad2004/EPIupdate2004_html_en/epi04_00_en.htm