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HIV Signs & Symptoms

While many HIV-positive people do not develop symptoms until long after their initial infection, there are certain signs that will begin to present themselves in the months and years following contraction.

  1. Just the Flu?

    • While many HIV-positive individuals are unaware they have contracted the virus, others experience a short, flu-like illness within two to four weeks. Fever, headache, swollen glands, rash and sore throat are common indications that something is wrong in your body.

    HIV in Children

    • While many of the symptoms of adult HIV patients appear in children infected with the virus, there are additional signs that a child might have HIV. Difficulty gaining weight and growing normally, walking problems, delays in mental development, severe ear infections, pneumonia or tonsillitis may indicate an infection.

    Years of Waiting

    • Some HIV-positive individuals live without symptoms for eight or nine years while the virus is hard at work, destroying immune cells. During this time, an infected person may have bouts of diarrhea, weight loss, swollen lymph nodes, fever, coughing and shortness of breath. Unfortunately, many HIV-positive individuals do not associate such symptoms with HIV infection, considering that they could have contracted the virus years prior.

    Symptoms Grow Serious

    • About 10 years after the infection, an HIV-positive individual will become aware of the affliction due to soaking night sweats, shaking chills, high fevers, chronic diarrhea, blurred vision and significant weight loss. While normal counts of helper T-cells, or immune cells, should be around 1,000, HIV patients typically have a count of 200 or less. The immune system is severely damaged, leaving it open to contracting opportunistic infections.

    Opportunistic Infections

    • When opportunistic infections present themselves in HIV-positive patients, they are considered to have developed AIDS. Kaposi's sarcoma (skin cancer), candidiasis (also known as thrush, with white spots and lesions in the mouth) and pneumocystis carinii pneumonia are conditions that signify the change from infection to autoimmune deficiency syndrome. This is a sign that the patient is not getting better, and once pneumonia is contracted, doctors usually issue a life expectancy of two years or less.

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