Let’s take a closer look at a few of the more common immune-system diseases. The signs and symptoms listed aren’t necessarily the only signals of the disease, and all of them may not occur in every instance. The point is to give you an idea of what the signs of impending immune difficulty may be.

AIDS: life-threatening, infectious disease spread by sexual contact, and other exchanges of body fluids, such as blood transfusions and intravenous-needle use. Caused by the HTLV-III virus. AIDS selectively causes immune suppression by destruction of T4 cells. Presently, it is not known what the incubation time for AIDS’s: It may be five years or more. We’ve only been tracking AIDS for five years, so we can’t say with absolute confidence that it is or is not easily spread. Presently, AIDS is considered fatal.

Signs and Symptoms: fever; cough; shortness of breath; sweats; enlarged lymph nodes in the neck, groin and other parts of the body; weight loss; often diarrhea; skin rashes; body wasting; muscle loss; may progress on to pneumonia, usually caused by opportunistic infections. Opportunistic infections are often caused by antigens that would ordinarily present little or no problem to our immune system. But with the immune system crippled by AIDS, these organisms cause a great deal of damage. Fifty percent of AIDS victims will have the opportunistic infection Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia; about 25 percent or so will have Kaposi’s sarcoma (first sign of Kaposi’s may be pigmented spots on the skin). A small number will have both penumocystis carinii and Kaposi’s. When you have AIDS, a simple infection such as herpes simplex or thrush mouth (Candida albicans) can be life-threatening.

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