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Signs & Symptoms of HIV Infection

Most people have some understanding of HIV. It is an infection caused by the human immunodeficiency virus, a pathogen passed from one person to the next through bodily fluids. But just coming into contact with these fluids doesn't necessarily produce an infection. The virus must somehow enter your bloodstream. This can occur through sexual intercourse, the sharing of needles, infected blood or other body fluids coming into contact with a break in your skin; or from mother to child during pregnancy, birth or breast-feeding. Once a sufficient amount of the virus enters your bloodstream, you may begin to display signs and symptoms of an infection.

  1. Asymptomatic

    • Many people infected with HIV won't necessarily display any signs or symptoms of the condition until much later, sometimes months or years after their initial exposure. This latency makes it very important to subscribe to periodic HIV/AIDS testing, especially if you're sexually active or engage in IV drug use. However, most people, according to the Mayo Clinic, experience a passing "flu-like" illness within two to eight weeks of infection.

    Early Symptoms

    • At the very onset of the infection, HIV often triggers a fever, ranging anywhere between 100 and 101 degrees Fahrenheit. Often accompanying this fever are swollen glands in both the neck and the groin, a sore throat, periodic headaches, night sweats and a slight rash involving raised areas of flushing along the skin. Most of these symptoms, which are commonly mistaken as "the flu," manifest two to eight weeks after exposure to the virus, and last anywhere from a week to a month.

    Late-Stage Symptoms

    • As the HIV infection worsens, many people begin to suffer from more chronic or persistent symptoms of the condition. For some people, this means the fever and swollen glands seen in the early symptoms of HIV infection, just much more unrelenting. For others, the infection can produce a breathlessness, a dry cough, nausea and diarrhea. Often times, people begin to experience unexplained weight loss.

    Later-Stage Symptoms

    • With more significant infections of HIV, people often experience more severe symptoms than in other stages of the condition. This is largely due to the proliferation of the virus in the blood cells, causing a fever and swollen glands for weeks or months at a time. These two symptoms are frequently accompanied by constant headaches, recurring diarrhea, chills, night sweats and an overwhelming sense of fatigue.

    Last-Stage Symptoms

    • For many people, the last stage of HIV infection, as it moves into AIDS, brings with it all of the earlier-stage symptoms, as well as other signs of the condition. Most of these are indications that your immune system is severely damaged. Along with the fever, swollen glands, headaches, chills, night sweats, nausea and diarrhea, a person may suffer from visual disturbances, like blurring and distortion, as well as the development of white lesions within the mouth.

      Once the disease progresses to AIDS, a whole host of opportunistic infections can develop, with additional symptoms ranging from lesions and rashes to severe weight loss, difficulty breathing and/or pneumonia, neurological problems like dementia, and many more. Many of these infections can result in death, especially if you have additional, or co-morbid, infections, such as hepatitis B or C.

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