Strategies for managing
opportunistic infections

May 2008     View PDF     En español

HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) infects the cells of your body’s immune system. It then impairs how they function and eventually kills them over time. This gradually weakens your immune system, and your body then loses its ability to fight disease. While HIV is the cause, most people who die of AIDS do not die of HIV per se. They die from the infections that the body can no longer control due to a weakened immune system. Fairly common infections, which may cause little or no harm in a healthy person, take the opportunity of a weakened immune system to cause serious and even life-threatening disease. This is why they’re called opportunistic infections, or OIs.

Dealing with OIs is an important part of a long-term plan for managing your HIV disease. The text over the next four pages explains in detail the different parts of an OI strategy, which includes:

• understanding what OIs are,
• learning how to prevent them,
• using preventive treatment when needed,
• treating them as they occur, and
• using maintenance therapy when needed.