When it comes to the signs and symptoms of HIV, you should know that it stands for human immunodeficiency virus.
The truth about the symptoms is that some of the people experience them as soon as they get infected, while others notice them only later.
Information about the indication of HIV
Even if someone shows early signs of HIV in many cases this is mistaken for other, less serious conditions. Usually they are treated like the flu or mild viral infection. Such symptoms include fever, tiredness, headache, diarrhea, nausea and larger lymph nodes in the armpits, neck and groin.
If someone shows any evidence of HIV, this usually disappears after about four weeks. As you can see we can all experience these symptoms in case of a cold or the flu.
This is why the best way to know if you are infected or not is to get tested. A lot of infected people don’t have any signs for years.
Later signs and symptoms of HIV
As the infection progresses some new symptoms appear according to the stage of the condition.
These include fast weight loss, recurring fever, sweats, dry cough, unexplained fatigue, swollen lymph nodes in the groin, armpits and neck, diarrhea lasting for more than one week and pneumonia.
There are some other HIV indicators as well that you should keep an eye out for, like white spots or blemishes on the throat, tongue or mouth, brown, red, purplish or pink blemishes under the skin in the nose, mouth or eyelids, depression, memory loss, or other neurological problems.
The signs and symptoms of HIV appear because the virus destroys the white blood cells. These are the ones that normally fight off an infection. This way the immune system gets weaker. As the white blood cell count drops, the body becomes more susceptible towards the infections that it was able to fight off before.
In the moment when it’s not only the HIV evidence that people have to fight with but they also have very low white blood cell count it is said that they have AIDS or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. According to official information, it’s not safe to rely solely on the symptoms to make a diagnosis.
The signs and symptoms of HIV and AIDS look very much alike the symptoms of different other kinds of illnesses and infections. Since we are talking about serious conditions, it is best to have the diagnosis made by a medical professional who has experience in this field.
Opportunistic infections
When it comes to the manifestation of HIV, it was already mentioned that the virus weakens the immune system. This way infections appear that were fought by the immune system before. These are known as opportunistic infections. There are many different conditions that we can consider, such as different forms of cancer.
As you can see, the signs and symptoms of HIV could vary greatly from one person to the other. The best thing you could do is to get tested regularly.
