HIV has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones Date Process Result September 18, 2005 Peer review Reviewed December 23, 2005 Good article nominee Listed July 10, 2006 Peer review Reviewed September 26, 2006 Featured article candidate Not promoted March 19, 2008 Featured article candidate Not promoted August 4, 2009 Good article reassessment Kept A news item involving this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "In the news" column on August 5, 2025. Current status: Good article

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This page has archives. Sections older than 90 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.

To whomever it may concern,

I am a student in a Neuropsychology course at Boston University. My professor has previously contacted the administrators of this page to attain permission to add a section. We would truly appreciate if you would review and add the section we would like to contribute. Please let us know what changes are necessary.

Thank you so much.

"Sexual intercourse" is NOT CORRECT for most common way to transmit. Anal Intercourse is correct. This is a blatant lie to say sexual intercourse. TMahoney2008 (talk) 17:46, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not done: as you have not cited reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to any article. - Arjayay (talk) 18:12, 30 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The page indicates "The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a lentivirus (slowly replicating retrovirus) that causes the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS),[1][2]"

Shouldn't it state "The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a lentivirus (slowly replicating retrovirus) that without intent ultimately induces the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS),[1][2]?"

For that self-generated and self-preferred statement to makes sense to the reader thereof, one must presume that HIV does not intentionally destroy...the Host of the host, "Host" being a reference to the infected homo sapient.

I've been taught that leukocytes infected with HIV release a sort of "suicide" signal that is taken by uninfected "killer" white blood signals as an imperative to self-destruct. If that is so, I think the evolving failure (attendant to HIV infection) of the "immune system" to fulfill its intended mission is ultimately what permits the diseases which comprise "AIDS" to proliferate in the Host.

Idiomatixx (talk) 23:15, 28 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No one (up till now) has read that sentence as imputing a consciousness to a virus. Viruses don't have minds, and therefore don't have intentions. Your reading leads to obvious absurdities; for example, that no infectious disease ever killed anyone, only the inadequacy of their immune system kills them. HIV is the cause of AIDS, and the article needs to state that very directly. There's no error in that statement, and it doesn't need correction. - Nunh-huh 02:26, 29 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's been well-known for quite some time that

• anal sex carries a vastly greater HIV infection risk than vaginal sex;
• that receptive anal sex is the single most risky sexual behavior with respect to HIV;
• that irrespective of gender, anal sex is more likely to cause infection-transmitting sores and lesions than other sex acts; and
• that male-male anal sex is the most common infection route for males in the U.S.

Isn't it rather unencyclopedic not to have discussion of any of this? Centrify (f / k / a FCAYS) (talk) (contribs) 21:58, 14 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is covered under HIV/AIDS#Transmission. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 05:58, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Reading is fundamental. Concerns allayed, thanks. (IOW: oops). Centrify (f / k / a FCAYS) (talk) (contribs) 16:29, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Per Adrian Hunter. Also, this is a global article so rates in any one country tend not to be key facts for the article. hamiltonstone (talk) 06:48, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That section (the WP:Permalink is here) does not mention anal sex, except for the chart, and, though HIV is highly unlikely to be transmitted via oral sex, the section gives a lot of weight to oral sex (perhaps WP:Undue weight to it). Sure, the section mentions men who have sex with men, but, like the Men who have sex with men article notes, anal sex is not the only sexual act that men who have sex with men engage in; for many (and some research reports for most), it's not even the primary sexual act that gay men or other men who have sex with men engage in. Many gay men or other men who have sex with men don't engage in anal sex at all. Flyer22 (talk) 13:06, 15 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The lead sentence defines a lentivirus as "a slowly replicating retrovirus". I don't think that's accurate. Despite the etymology of their name, lentiviruses aren't particularly slow in replicating compared with other retroviruses - in fact within a couple of weeks of infection during the primary stage of HIV/AIDS, plasma viral loads can be 10^6 or 10^7 particles per ml, and much higher in lymphoid tissue. Furthermore, the initial disease caused by HIV infection occurs within a few weeks of infection, which is typical of viral diseases. The main distinctions between lentiviruses and other genera of retroviruses are in their morphology, the complexity of their genomes and that they can infect both dividing and non-dividing cells, not their rate of replication - which is in any case highly variable at different stages of the disease.

Lentiviruses originally got their name because many of them cause end-stage disease long after the initial infection. But this is far from unique among retroviruses, or among chronic viral infections generally.

I think the lead sentence would more accurately read "The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a lentivirus (a type of retrovirus) that causes the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)". On A Leash (talk) 08:13, 30 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know who wrote the lead sentence and whether it's correct or not but according to this paper the replication cycle of HIV is 52 hours. Is that slow or fast in comparison to other retroviruses? Chakalacka (talk) 09:26, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am struggling to find a suitable source. "Fundamentals of Molecular Virology" by Acheson, second edition states "lentiviruses induce slowly progressing, wasting disease" on page 343. I am inclined to think that On A Leash is right. I have changed the article's lead sentence. Axl ¤ [Talk] 16:10, 4 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that looks good. The next sentence says: "Without treatment, average survival time after infection with HIV is estimated to be 9 to 11 years, depending on the HIV subtype." I think it would be more accurate to say median rather than average, and that is the term that is used in the cited source (page 10). As with most diseases, average (rather than median) survival time can be difficult to establish accurately through natural history studies, because there is often a subgroup of very long-term survivors.On A Leash (talk) 00:54, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Rather unhelpfully, the reference is a 60-page pdf with no page number indicated. I eventually found the relevant statement on page 16 of the pdf (page 10 of the document): "In the absence of such treatment, the net median survival time after infection with HIV is now estimated to be 11 years (UNAIDS Reference Group on Estimates, Modelling and Projections, 2006), instead of the previously estimated nine years (UNAIDS Reference Group on Estimates, Modelling and Projections, 2002)."

You are right to point out that "median" is more accurate than "average". However we should aim to keep the lead section as accessible as possible to all readers. Many readers will not know what "median" means. How about: "Without treatment, average (median) survival time after infection with HIV is estimated to be 9 to 11 years, depending on the HIV subtype." Axl ¤ [Talk] 13:44, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Although some readers may not know the difference between "median" and "average", I think it would compound that confusion to treat the two terms as though they meant the same thing. Perhaps the best solution would be to use the correct term and hyperlink it (median) for the benefit of readers who are usure. On A Leash (talk) 15:57, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There used to be a chart showing the rates of infection per 10,000 exposures - i.e. receptive vaginal intercourse, insertive anal intercourse, etc. Why was it removed? I think it is important to show that the risk of infection is much higher in receptive anal intercourse than receptive vaginal intercourse; as well as many different activities that are susceptible to HIV infection. A link to this information can be found at: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/policies/law/risk.html

We seem to go round this loop from time to time. You can find the last discussion of this here, where the consensus was that a table with this data wouldbe good, but we all had some reservations about whether the underlying studies had been adequately evaluated by our editors as representing the most current and most reliable of the available reliable sources. There is a version of the table currently in the HIV/AIDS article, and we could begin by bringing that across. But the CDC one does appear generally to be cited to more recent sources, so i would favour inserting those rate figures (they don't cover every item in the WP table, though). hamiltonstone (talk) 23:31, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'd suggest not to copy the chart here. The idea is that the scope of this article is the biology/science of the virus while HIV/AIDS covers the disease (see the line of explanation on top of both articles). The transmission risks for various sex practices, needle sharing etc. clearly belong in the other article. Chakalacka (talk) 02:14, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why? It is about the transmission of the virus, not the disease. hamiltonstone (talk) 02:20, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]