HIV/AIDS

• HIV / AIDS Symptoms
  
  Many people with HIV do not know they are infected.

• Many people have no symptoms develop after they are infected with HIV. Others have a flu-like illness within days to weeks after exposure to the virus. They complain of fever, headache, fatigue, and enlarged lymph nodes in the neck.

• These symptoms usually disappear on their own within a few weeks. After that, the person feels normal and has no symptoms. This asymptomatic phase often takes years.
  
  • The progression of the disease varies greatly between individuals. This condition can last from a few months to more than 10 years.
  
  ◦ During this period, the virus remains active and multiply infects and kills the cells of the immune system.
  
  ◦ The virus destroys the cells that the primary infection fighters, a type of white blood cells called CD4 cells.
  
  ◦ Although the person has no symptoms, he or she is contagious and can transmit HIV to others through the routes mentioned above.
  AIDS is the later stage of HIV infection, when the body begins to lose the ability to fight infection. Once the CD4 count drops low enough, an infected person is said to have AIDS. Sometimes the diagnosis of AIDS made because the person has unusual infections or cancers that show how weak immune systems.
  • The infections that occur with AIDS are called opportunistic infections because they use the possibility of a weakened host to infect. The infections include (but are not limited to)
  
  
  ◦ Pneumonia caused by Pneumocystis, causing wheezing;
  
  ◦ Brains infected with toxoplasmosis, which trouble thinking or stroke symptoms that mimic cause;
  
  
  ◦ widespread infection with a bacterium called MAC (Mycobacterium avium complex) that can cause fever and weight loss;
  
  
  ◦ Yeast infection of the swallowing tube (esophagus), causing pain with swallowing;
  
  
  ◦ Widespread disease in certain fungi such as histoplasmosis, which are fever, cough, anemia and other problems can cause.
  
  
  • A weakened immune system can also lead to other unusual conditions:
  
  
  ◦ lymphoma (a cancer of the lymph tissue) in the brains, and fever which can cause problems with thinking;
  
  
  ◦ A soft tissue cancer called Kaposi's sarcoma, which are brown, reddish or purple spots that develop on the skin or in the mouth.