13 Surprising Things Most People Don’t Know About HIV and AIDS

Timing is everything

For Gen Xers, millennials, and the generations that follow, AIDS looks completely different than it did to those who were full-blown adults in the mid-80s. Case in point: If you were diagnosed in 1985 you almost certainly died, but, if you were diagnosed in 1995, you may very well still be alive. “This is because it took eight years from the identification of the virus for the first drug (AZT) to be approved, which was 1989,” says Josh Bloom, Ph.D., director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences for the American Council on Science and Health. But, as he points out, in the grand scheme of things, AZT didn’t work out. “It would be another six years until Inverase, which was discovered at Roche, became the first useful drug to be approved in 1995,” says Dr. Bloom. It’s no coincidence that the death rate from AIDS decreased for the first time ever after that fateful year. Check out how there could be a potential cure from this animal’s immune system.

The post 13 Surprising Things Most People Don’t Know About HIV and AIDS appeared first on Reader's Digest.