Recreational Drugs and HIV Progression
Many physicians who have treated and followed up HIV/AIDS patients have observed and reported that most of the patients who smoked tobacco(cigarette) or drank alcohol rapidly went out of health and succumbed to full-blown AIDS. Recent studies have shown that cocaine activates quiescent white blood cells(T-lymphocytes) and causes them to take up the HIV but the cells stop short of destroying the HIV or dying with the virus, in defense, to save the patient. Rather the infected white cells provide a sanctuary for the the virus, which eventually replicates and infects other cells, following further episodes of cocaine activation trigger. In fact during viral latency the virus exploits the host's autophagy system to supply nutrients, prevent death and prolong the survival of the host cell and by corollary its own very viability and then slows down both the host cell's and its own activity, prevents viral protein synthesis and the expression of antigens so as to escape detection un...