HIV, or to give it its full name Human Immunodeficiency Virus, has certain common regularities also found in other viruses, such as the common cold or the Flu. Albeit there is one main difference between this virus and others; over time your body can clear your body of the Flu and a cold as your immune system is able to fight off the virus. Yet this is not the case with HIV as the human immune system cannot combat this virus and clear it from your system.
HIV can lay practically dormant in the cells in your body for long periods of time and we know that it attacks two key parts of your bodies immune system, your CD4 cells and T-cells. These cells are key to your bodies immune system as it utilizes these to fight infections and diseases, but HIV invades these cells, uses them to replicate itself and then destroys the host cell.