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HIV infection (once it occurs) is lifelong. We do not have a cure at the present time. About 60% of the people (or less) when they acquire HIV may have some symptoms. An equal number have no symptoms whatsoever. But early symptoms after acquiring it include: fever, swollen throat or sore throat, lymph nodes in the neck and the back of the neck and under the arms are swollen. Occasionally, about 50% of these individuals who actually appear ill will have a rash that looks much like mononucleosis. In other words, it's a flat red rash found on the torso and the arms and legs of the individual. Virtually 100 percent of these people will have a fever.
HIV infection (once it occurs) is lifelong. We do not have a cure at the present time. About 60% of the people (or less) when they acquire HIV may have some symptoms. An equal number have no symptoms whatsoever. But early symptoms after acquiring it include: fever, swollen throat or sore throat, lymph nodes in the neck and the back of the neck and under the arms are swollen. Occasionally, about 50% of these individuals who actually appear ill will have a rash that looks much like mononucleosis. In other words, it's a flat red rash found on the torso and the arms and legs of the individual. Virtually 100 percent of these people will have a fever.
I think everyone (every adult) in the United States should receive a HIV test at least once in their life. Those who have risk factors for HIV (for example: gay men who are practicing sex without condoms, intravenous drug users) should have it more often. This extends to people even to the age of 13, where they become sexually active. These individuals should be tested. People should not wait until they feel sick to get this test because the sooner we can intervene with antiretroviral drugs, the better it is for the patient and the better for our community because we reduce the ability of these individuals to transmit it to others.
I think the first step is diagnosis and as we talked about, this is performed by doing a blood test. These are available at virtually every hospital. Every physician can order this test on any individual. Then secondly: if you have HIV, there are a number of avenues which you can pursue. You may have a very knowledgeable primary care physician you want to stay with but I would recommend that at some point you see someone who's specializing in HIV care for the simple reason that the drugs are now so powerful that there also can be problems in implementing them and keeping them going, that at least a visit with a specialist in HIV care once would be important. The economics (if you will) of having an HIV infection may appear daunting, but anyone in the United States should be able to obtain drugs for the treatment of HIV. Those who have no work, no insurance, they can go to a local Ryan White clinic and obtain all of this help. These clinics are available in most big cities.
The current approach to an individual just discovered to have HIV is: 1. Counsel them about their disease. 2. To obtain another test called a genotype. This is a blood test where the virus is plucked out and we can determine what drugs this viruses susceptible to. And then: 3. As soon as possible, start effective antiretroviral therapy. And the current use of drugs employs three drugs (minimum) - two different classes of action of these drugs on the virus. This is highly effective with the so-called Integrase Inhibitors and Nucleoside drugs (two different classes of drugs.) You can rapidly bring the viral load in the blood in patients with HIV to undetectable levels and simultaneously, the CD4 cell counts (which are a measure of the immunity) begin to restore themselves.
In the absence of any therapy, if patients are individuals acquire HIV (perhaps 10 years later and no medications or no diagnosis) they may end up with a syndrome known as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. In this circumstance, these are individuals who are known to have infection with HIV, but their immunity has been destroyed over the intervening years to the point where they're subject to infections with very uncommon and weak diseases, bacteria, parasites, and other viruses.
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