Analysis of the HIV infection and the scope of AIDS

Overview -

It is well known that HIV affected people become more prone to various other diseases because of massive fall in their immunity. However, it has been clinically seen that in certain cases an HIV affected person stays healthy for many years and does not grow the AIDS (Aqua Immune Deficiency Syndromes) at all for the entire life. On the other hand, it has been also seen that in certain cases the person grows the AIDS very soon and dies. Even, various other cases have been clinically observed where the patients survive for a comparatively longer or lesser time than expected. Thus, it can be understood that despite the existence of HIV in the body, various other factors are also associated with the processes of a person growing AIDS. Some of these attributes help a person to survive a long, while, due to some other of these, the chance of acquiring AIDS from HIV increases. Many such attributes have been clinically identified - such as - the context, existence of many other bacteria or virus - like tuberculosis, pneumonia etc., family status of the patient, environment of the patient, role of various antibiotics etc. In this study we aim to understand the significance of the role of each such attribute. Through a collaboration with the SMST, IIT Kharagpur we are at present on the way of collecting the detailed data of 700 HIV affected children. We plan to understand the dataset as a bipartite network where one partite set comprises of the children/patents and the other set contains various attributes. After acquiring the desired dataset, we plan to employ network-analysis methodologies on the projections of this bipartite network to understand the correlation among the roles of various attributes as well as the patients. We believe that this work would appropriately distinguish between helpful and detrimental attributes which would definitely allow HIV affected persons to survive longer, thereby, reducing the acuteness of the disease. We are preparing a manuscript [Reference 1] containing all these analysis.