AIDS On Another World

[Roc]

So recently I've been toying with the idea that one of my characters has AIDS. The only problem is I haven't begun my research yet and was curious if any of you could shed some light on it. More specifically, what would happen to someone with AIDS if they were taken to a different planet where the usual disease does not exist, perhaps even disease that wouldn't affect humans? What might their lifespan be on this new planet?

Thanks for your input guys!

 

[CupofJoe]

I am absolutely not an expert in this field but as it is an auto-immunity disease I could see your MC being as vulnerable and probably far more so than a standard/healthy human would be to any illness. Without the retro-viral drugs that holds HIV and AIDS at bay, their life expectancy might only be a few painful years.
It would also be the case such as in HG Wells' War of the Worlds that even the simplest cold germ could prove fatal to anyone not of that planet. So their life expectancy could be days... cheery thought...
I await more expert comment...

 

[Penpilot]

Disclaimer here. My knowledge of biology is on the 100 level of university and I took another course on biodiversity with a component about genetics. So what I know is very limited and I'm just speculating based on my limited knowledge.

It depends on what you want to do. The most obvious result if this person can't get or doesn't have the drugs to treat it, they'll die just like they would on Earth. You're body carries around germs that normally wouldn't hurt you but with an compromised immune system, they can kill you. Depending on the amount of stress the new environment on this person, that can accelerate things.

BUT depending on what kind of story you're telling you can have lots of different things happen. We can't know how an alien atmosphere can affect the virus. It can accelerate the process or maybe there's a weird mix of stuff in the atmosphere that helps the body fight the virus. Then there's the possibility of alien germs and viruses. Again they may accelerate the disease or the person may get lucky and encounter a germ or virus that kills the HIV virus without harming the host, curing the person.

OR the HIV virus may thrive on this new world. It may mutate and spread to other species on the planet doing major harm or no harm at all. Again, it's all about how you envision things happening in the type of story you're trying to tell.

 

[Asura Levi]

Having seen people (neighbours actually) die from it I can safely say this:
- if he is taken to a world with unknown disease to humans but that can affect humans, s/he will die, soon. As pointed out by CupofJoe about a simple cold.
- on the other hand, if that are no diseases that can affect human beings, the moment s/he get hurt, wounded: bye bye baby. People with AIDS are unable to heal themselves.

My opinion, based more on experience than on scientific knowledge is that your MC will die quickly if s/he doesn't have access to any drugs that might help. On the other hand, as it is a different world, maybe something in the food, water, maybe something in the atmosphere might hold AIDS at bay, even cure it at long term exposure.

All-in-all, as it is a different world, it is up to you really.

 

[Aspasia]

Curing HIV is rather difficult ... it's a retrovirus, which means it actually integrates its DNA into the DNA of the host. If you catch the infection super early, it's possibly that all the cells which act as hosts for the virus can be theoretically killed off. But it's hard. The virus can lay dormant for years, without the person showing symptoms. This makes it basically impossible to target the cells that harbor the virus DNA integrated into their own genomes -- they look just like other cells. Once the virus is "activated" and starts replicating, that's when the drugs and immune system can try to target it, but also that's when the virus is doing the most damage to the person. So I'd say having a chemical / other agent that can "cure" AIDS would be difficult to imagine (which is why we only have drugs that keep viral load down, but can't actually wash the virus out of the system) even on some other planet. Keeping it at bay though sounds much more possible.

Like several posters said before, the main way AIDS kills people is by other, opportunistic infections jumping in and overwhelming the patient's weakened immune system. No diseases that can affect humans? Then that problem is taken out of the equation. However, that doesn't mean there will be no symptoms / effects of AIDS on the person at all, just that the most common reason for death isn't an issue anymore.

Another thing to keep in mind ... antiretroviral drugs work by targeting specific parts of the viral life cycle. Unfortunately, many of these processes are also normal, cellular processes that our cells undergo (retroviruses are HARD!). Thus, antiretroviral drugs often have unfortunate side-effects on the patients. Any alien chemical that would slow / suppress retroviral replication would also probably have deleterious effects on the people. Retroviruses are so successful because they look just like normal cellular elements at so many stages of their life cycle -- they're extremely hard to target specifically!

Source: Insanely cool university Virology class + Genetics major (I DID take that class in winter, though, so if someone with more correct knowledge finds something wrong, please correct me!)