HIV become resistant to antiviral therapy Has Developed AIDS why or why not?

 Page 4 of your Lecture 17 In-Class Activity (Part 2: “Is Mr. Brown the Unluckiest Man in the World?”).

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Q9: Has Mr. Brown’s HIV infection become resistant to antiretroviral therapy? Has he developed AIDS? Why or why not?

Answer:

• No, he has not developed AIDS yet.
• His HIV RNA is too low to detect, which means the virus is not actively replicating — this suggests the therapy is still working.
• His CD4+ T-cell count is 700 cells/μL, which is within normal/optimal range. AIDS is typically diagnosed when CD4 drops below 200 cells/μL.
• Therefore, he has not developed AIDS, and the virus is not resistant to the therapy at this time.

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Q10: Which cell type is most responsible for Mr. Brown’s elevated white blood cell count?

Answer:

• According to the table, the most elevated immune cell type is:
  Myeloblasts = 22,120 cells/μL, which is very high and abnormal.
• This is much higher than normal (normally close to zero), and is not supposed to be in the blood in high numbers.

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Q11: Why is this high myeloblast count a problem? Where are these cells supposed to be?

Answer:

• Myeloblasts are immature white blood cells normally found only in the bone marrow.
• They are precursors to other white blood cells and should not circulate in the bloodstream in large numbers.
• High levels in blood suggest something is wrong — possibly leukemia or bone marrow dysfunction.
• This is problematic because these immature cells don’t fight infection properly, and they crowd out normal cells in the blood.