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INTRODUCTION Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a lentivirus(slowly replicating retrovirus) that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive. Infection with HIV occurs by the transfer of blood, semen, vaginal fluid, pre-ejaculate, or breast milk. Within these bodily fluids, HIV is present as both free virus particles and virus within infected immune cells. HIV infects vital cells in the human immune system such as helper T cells (specifically CD4+ T cells), macrophages, and dendritic cells. HIV infection leads to low levels of CD4 + T cells through a number of mechanisms including: apoptosis of uninfected bystander cells, direct viral killing of infected cells, and Killing of infected CD4+ T cells by CD8 cytotoxic lymphocytes that recognize infected cells. When CD4+ T cell numbers decline below a critical level, cell-mediated immunity is lost, and the body becomes progressively more susceptible to opportunistic infections. 1.1 EPIDEMEOLOGY OF HIV HIV PANDEMIC: HIV/AIDS is a Global pandemic. As of 2011 approximately 34 million people have HIV worldwide. Of these, approximately 17.2 million are men, 16.8 million are A Correlative study of IL12 cytokine and Cortisol in HIV Patients with Depression 2 P a g e women and 3.4 million are less than 15 years old. There were about 1.8 million deaths from AIDS in 2010, down from 2.2 million in 2005. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region most affected. In 2010, an estimated 68% (22.9 million) of all HIV cases and 66% of all deaths (1.2 million) occurred in this region. This means that about 5% of the adult populations are infected. Here, in contrast to other regions women compose nearly 60% of cases. South Africa has the largest population of people with HIV of any country in the world at 5.9 million. South & South East Asia (a region with about 2 billion people as of 2010, over 30% of the global population) has an estimated 4 million cases (12% of all people living with HIV), with about 250,000 deaths in 2010. Approximately 2.5 million of these cases are in India, where however the prevalence is only about 0.3% (somewhat higher than that found in Western and Central Europe or Canada). Prevalence is lowest in East Asia at 0.1%.Since AIDS was first recognized in 1981 it has led to nearly 30 million deaths.(wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology of HIV/AIDS) HIV IN INDIA: While the National AIDS Control Organization (2008-09) estimated that 2.39 million people live with HIV/AIDS in India, a more recent investigation by the Million Death Study Collaborators reported in the British Medical Journal (2010) estimates the population to be between 1.4-1.6 million people. The last decade has seen a 50% decline in the number of new HIV infections. According to more recent National AIDS Control Organization data, India has demonstrated an overall reduction of 57 percent in estimated annual new HIV,

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