Lose Your Cells

Look, HIV has one shot, one opportunity
To seize a CD4 positive T cell in one moment
Will it capture it or just let it slip?

He presents with fever, throat’s sore, lymphs are larger
There’s viremia in serum already, mild severity
He’s nauseous, and on the surface there’s a rash, kind a red
With bumps, his hist’ry keeps on forgettin’
Who he went down on, GP120 works so well,
It opens the cell, then the capsid comes out
Breaks open, retrotranscription’s goin’ now
It translocates, inserts, genome, no!
Snap back to the physical. Oh! He has HIV
Oh, the ELISA, it’s plus
This is bad, acute phase HIV
Does he know
Who did have it? He don’t care about it, he’ll cope
With the matter. Promote
His treatment, use of an
RT inhibitor
With two nucleoside analogues, in three months
Back for his labs again, yo,
To monitor
His CD4 levels and keep an eye on his viral load.

Don’t wanna lose your cells to the virus, infecting,
Dividing, it will never let you go
You gotta take your HAART, and don’t miss a single dose
Loss of immunity comes from CD4 death, yo!

Virus invading, through the CD4 baiting
With GP120 waiting,
As it binds, CXCR4, CCR5
Conformational changes, put GP 4 1 close to cell membrane
4 1 leads to fusion, virus intrusion
RT polymerase, RNA to DNA
Into genome, mRNA transcription
Replicates, virus budding
10 years farther down road, ain’t been bothered.
Test shows CD4 lows for the viral squatter
Counts below 200 from T cell slaughter,
His docs don’t wait any mo: prophylaxis!
He’s moved on to the next stage, it’s AIDS
Then you gotta start treatin
Stop things like common colds before uncontrolled
Secondary infections, gonna prevent with 
Lotsa antibiotics

Don’t wanna lose your cells to the virus, infecting,
Dividing, it will never let you go
You gotta take your HAART, and don’t miss a single dose
Loss of immunity comes from CD4 death, yo!