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Oral thrush
The patients’ palate (top) and tongue (bottom) show the symptoms of oral thrush, an opportunistic fungal infection.
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Kaposi’s sarcoma
in a male patient.
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Click on pictures.
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4. What are the symptoms?
At first, an infected person may not develop any symptoms at all or only some temporary flu-like symptoms like fever, a sore throat, diarrhea, swollen lymph nodes, and pain in various parts of the body. Often, these symptoms are not taken seriously, and thus the infection may not be recognized for what it is. Only in a few cases are the symptoms severe enough to require special medical attention or hospitalization. This first stage of the disease is called “primary HIV infection” or "acute HIV infection”.
After the initial symptoms have disappeared, some infected individuals remain outwardly healthy for ten years or longer. This second stage of the disease is therefore often called “asymptomatic HIV infection”. However, once infected, females and males live with a chronic disease, and the virus continues to weaken their immune system. Moreover, every infected person can infect others during sexual contact and through sharing injection needles for intravenous drug use.
As the immune system is weakened further, serious symptoms may appear. For example: Skin rashes, fever, fatigue, night sweats, oral thrush, etc .This stage is often called “symptomatic HIV infection”. However, such relatively light symptoms will finally be followed by severe health problems. This final stage of the infection is usually referred to as “full-blown AIDS”. The immune system has broken down, and, as a result, any number of illnesses now manifest themselves. For example: Pneumocistis (PCP), an especially dangerous form of pneumonia, tuberculosis, Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS), an otherwise rare form of skin cancer, and various other cancers, “wasting”, i.e. continuing weight loss, various brain diseases, and many more, eventually killing the patient.
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