Illustration of how an HIV infection maintains itself. The AIDS virus (green) that has penetrated into the blood vessel infects then injects its genome into the inactive T lymphocytes (in pink on the right side of the illustration). This triggers apoptosis of the infected T lymphocytes (in brown) which would normally act as an immune defence system preventing bacteria from the intestine from getting into the blood flow. The bacteria can thus reach, via the blood flow, other parts of the body and trigger inflammation in various organs. Furthermore, the macrophages (pinkish in colour on the left of the illustration), in contact with viruses other than the AIDS virus, put antigens detected in these other viruses into the infected T lymphocytes (blue). These multiply, triggering HIV replication.
