General Symptoms of HIV

Infection by HIV, an acronym for human immunodeficiency virus, causes an incurable life-threatening condition that attacks and slowly destroys white blood cells called CD4 lymphocytes, which are responsible for protecting the body from invading organisms. Consequently, the immune system gradually becomes unable to resist disease-causing bacteria, fungi, and viruses as the person reaches the last stage of HIV infection, namely AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). A tiny segment of people with HIV never develop AIDS.

Early Stage

• HIV infection progresses at different rates in different people, so there are no set, universal measurements of how long each phase of infection lasts. People in the earliest part of infection often have no symptoms, which is why many don't realize they are infected for up to a decade or longer.

  If symptoms are present, they may include features that resemble the flu, such as a fever, headache, rash, sore throat, and swollen lymph nodes. These usually occur within two weeks to a month after HIV first infects the person.

Middle Stage

• As HIV continually destroys CD4 lymphocytes, also called helper T cells, the infected person will commonly start experiencing recurring symptoms and/or less severe infections, including the swollen lymph nodes that frequently first indicate the presence of HIV infection, as well as chronic dry coughing, diarrhea, fever, shortness of breath, and unexplained weight loss. Because HIV generally opens the body up to numerous types of infections, there is no comprehensive list of symptoms and other signs may be apparent.

Late Stage

• The final stage of HIV infection occurs right before full-blown AIDS, which is the point at which a person has a positive result on an HIV-antibody test, in addition to either a T cell count of 200 or less, or a diagnosis of a specific cancer (for instance, lymphoma or Kaposi's sarcoma) or opportunistic infection. Around this time, the symptoms of the earlier stages, if present, may become more severe and persistent, and other symptoms may arise, such as blurry vision, fever above 100 degrees Fahrenheit that lasts for weeks, lesions or white spots on the surfaces of the mouth and tongue, ongoing fatigue, profuse sweating at night, and shakes brought on by chills.

Children

• Symptoms of HIV infection are often different for children. They may include developmental problems with gaining weight, growing, walking, and maturing mentally. Some HIV-infected children also develop the usual childhood medical conditions, such as an ear infection or tonsillitis, but with symptoms that are more severe than in children not infected with HIV.

Warning

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that it's not reliable to evaluate perceived symptoms in an attempt to guess if a person is or is not infected with HIV. One reason is because related symptoms often overlap with those of other diseases and medical conditions. Another reason is that HIV infection doesn't always produce symptoms in an infected person, or symptoms may occur at different stages. The only way to confirm HIV status is to take an HIV test.