Don’t Ignore! These are 16 Signs You May Have HIV…Check Yourself Now
HIV/AIDS is a widespread disease in the world today and victims may live
with it without even knowing. These are some signs you should not joke
with.
Within a month or two of HIV entering the
body, 40% to 90% of people experience flulike symptoms known as acute
retroviral syndrome (ARS).
But sometimes HIV symptoms don’t appear for years—sometimes even a decade—after infection.
“In the early stages of HIV infection, the most common symptoms are none,” says
Michael Horberg, MD, director of HIV/AIDS for Kaiser Permanente, in
Oakland, Calif. One in five people in the United States with HIV doesn’t
know they have it, which is why it’s so important to get tested,
especially if you have unprotected $ex with more than one partner or use
intravenous drugs.
Here are some signs that you may be HIV-positive.
1. Fever
One of the first signs of ARS can be a mild fever, up to about 102 degrees F.
The fever, if it occurs at all, is often accompanied by other
usually mild symptoms, such as fatigue, swollen lymph glands, and a sore
throat.
“At this point the virus is moving into the blood stream and starting to replicate in large numbers,”
says Carlos Malvestutto, MD, instructor of infectious diseases and
immunology in the department of medicine at NYU School of Medicine in
New York City. “As that happens, there is an inflammatory reaction by the immune system.”
2. Fatigue
The inflammatory response generated by your besieged immune system
also can cause you to feel tired and lethargic. Fatigue can be both an
early and later sign of HIV.
Ron, 54, a public relations executive in the Midwest, started to
worry about his health when he suddenly got winded just walking. “Everything I did, I got out of breath,” he says. “Before that I had been walking three miles a day.”
Ron had tested HIV positive 25 years before feeling so tired;
fatigue during acute, or newly contracted, HIV might not be so obvious.
3. Achy muscles, joint pain, swollen lymph nodes
ARS is often mistaken for the flu, mononucleosis, or another viral infection, even syphilis or hepatitis.
That’s not surprising: Many of the symptoms are the same, including pain in the joints and muscles and swollen lymph glands.
Lymph nodes are part of your body’s immune system and tend to get
inflamed when there’s an infection. Many of them are located in your
armpit, groin, and neck.
4. Sore throat and headache
As with other symptoms, sore throat and headache can often be recognized as ARS only in context, Dr. Horberg says.
If you’ve engaged recently in high-risk behavior, an HIV test is a
good idea. Get tested for your own sake and for others: HIV is most
infectious in the earliest stage.
Keep in mind that the body hasn’t produced antibodies to HIV yet so
an antibody test may not pick it up. (It can take a few weeks to a few
months for HIV antibodies to show in a blood test). Investigate other
test options such as one that detects viral RNA, typically within nine
days of infection.
5. Skin rash
Skin rashes can occur early or late in the course of HIV/AIDS.
For Ron, this was another sign that he might not have run-of-the-mill allergies or a cold.
“They were like boils, with some itchy pink areas on my arms,” Ron
says. The rashes can also appear on the trunk of the body. “If [the
rashes] aren’t easily explained or easily treated, you should think
about having an HIV test,” Dr. Horberg says.
6. Nausea, vomiting, diarrhea
Anywhere from 30% to 60% of people have short-term nausea,
vomiting, or diarrhea in the early stages of HIV, Dr. Malvestutto says.
These symptoms can also appear as a result of antiretroviral
therapy and later in the infection, usually as the result of an
opportunistic infection.
“Diarrhea that is unremitting and not responding at all to usual therapy might be an indication,” Dr. Horberg says. Or symptoms may be caused by an organism not usually seen in people with healthy immune systems, he adds.
7. Weight loss
Once called “AIDS wasting,” weight loss is a sign of more advanced illness and could be due in part to severe diarrhea.
“If you’re already losing weight, that means the immune system is usually fairly depleted,” Dr. Malvestutto says. “This
is the patient who has lost a lot of weight even if they continue to
eat as much as possible. This is late presentation. We still see a lot
of these.” It has become less common, however, thanks to antiretroviral therapy.
A person is considered to have wasting syndrome if they lose 10% or
more of their body weight and have had diarrhea or weakness and fever
for more than 30 days, according to the U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services.
8. Dry cough
A dry cough was the first sign Ron had that something was wrong. He at first dismissed it as bad allergies.
But it went on for a year and a half—and kept getting worse.
Benadryl, antibiotics, and inhalers didn’t fix the problem. Neither did
allergists.
This symptom—an “insidious cough that could be going on for weeks that doesn’t seem to resolve,” Dr. Malvestutto says—is typical in very ill HIV patients.
9. Pneumonia
The cough and the weight loss may also presage a serious infection
caused by a germ that wouldn’t bother you if your immune system was
working properly.
“There are many different opportunistic infections and each one can present differently,” Dr.
Malvestutto says. In Ron’s case, it was Pneumocystis pneumonia (PCP),
aka “AIDS pneumonia,” which eventually landed him in the hospital.
Other opportunistic infections include toxoplasmosis, a parasitic
infection that affects the B.rain; a type of herpes virus called
cytomegalovirus; and yeast infections such as thrush.
10. Night sweats
About half of people get night sweats during the early stages of HIV infection, Dr. Malvestutto says.
These can be even more common later in infection and aren’t related to exercise or the temperature of the room.
Similar to the hot flashes that menopausal women suffer, they’re
also hard to dismiss, given that they soak your bedclothes and sheets.
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