Early HIV AIDS Symptoms And Treatment

AIDS has never been an easy disease to talk about. Initially when the disease first came into recognition, it made the sufferer a social pariah. Ignorant people considered the patients as contagious and it wasn’t unusual for the patient to be boycotted completely. Times have changed with more awareness nowadays as the disease has spread wide and far affecting nearly every strata of society. Just as with cancer AIDS is now an equal opportunity killer affecting men, women and children from all over the globe irrespective of how much money or social affluence they might have.

The signs of HIV infection vary from person to person. The main problem is that there are no precise or specific symptoms linked to HIV infection. The most precise method to detect or diagnose HIV infection is testing for HIV antibodies by using Western Blot or ELIZA and that is the only way that you can be sure whether you are clean or infected. The western blot or ELIZA HIV test gives a positive result only when the person’s immune system produces antibodies to combat the HIV virus. Some of the early symptoms of HIV are rapid weight loss, fatigue, pneumonia, night sweating, dry coughs, swollen lymph glands or sometimes even depression or unexplained memory loss. After the transmission of the virus, most infected patients develop an unexplained fever within 2-4 weeks. After that patients may be completely free of infection or symptoms for about 8 or 9 years. But even through this period, the virus continues to replicate to kill off the normal immune system of the patient. Common symptoms include-