Stages of HIV .

Stages of HIV:

As we already know that HIV is infection of virus only. It acts on your body in such a way that your body losts the resisting power against the other diseases and viruses. As the virus keeps growing in your body, the person will develop other diseases which are normal diseases only but difficult to cure as body is losing the potency to fight against these diseases.

But one who is infected with HIV don’t need to afraid.  With safety measures and following the doctor’s advice, one can resist the growth of HIV virus as the virus will not decrease resisting ability suddenly. Once the virus infects a person, the growth and count increases gradually in stages, here if one follows correct measures and proper advice of doctor in the early stages of HIV infection he can delay each stage as much as long up to several decades .

Stages of HIV:

As you have already read HIV to AIDS Transformation Takes Place in Stages. The identification of HIV stages i.e., whether it is the first stage of HIV or the final stage of HIV can be characterized by symptoms specific to each stage of HIV.

 So identification of the HIV phase is important for a doctor to give a proper advice to the patient suffering with HIV. Without treatment HIV infection eventually advances to AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) and death. Hence, to get an idea about these stages of HIV and characterize it below 4 different stages of HIV are explained briefly with symptoms of each stage.

First Stage of HIV or Stage of Acute infection and Symptoms:  

·         This is the first stage of HIV infection. This stage is also called “Acute retro viral syndrome”.

·         It occurs within 2-4 weeks after the person is infected. During this stage flu like symptoms such as fever, headache, sore throat, rash, muscle pains, fatigue appear.

·         During this period large virus replicates actively and attacks the immune system particularly CD4 cells. So CD4 cell count may decrease during this initial stage.

·         Eventually, immune response will begin to bring the amount of virus in your body back down to a stable level. At this point,CD4 count will then begin to increase, but it may not return to pre-infection levels. 

·         In this stage the risk of transmission is very much higher than other stages.

Second Stage of HIV or Latent stage of HIV Infection and its Symptoms:

·         During this stage the person is asymptomatic  in the sense he looks normal.

·         Even though this stage is asymptomatic , virus continues to replicate and infection continues in the body. So the patient is still capable of transmitting the infection to others.

·         With ART (Anti Retro Viral Treatment) the patients can survive for longer duration (several decades with proper ART).

·         Without ART the disease progresses quickly.

·         Towards the end of this stage CD4 count starts declining and the person immune system is progressively crippled.

Third Stage of HIV or AIDS (Aquired Immuno deficiency Syndrome) and Symptoms:

·         During this stage the immune system is badly destroyed.

·         So the body is vulnerable to opportunistic infections and infection related cancers.

·         Kaposi sarcoma one type of cancer is most common in AIDS patients.

·         A person is said to be having AIDS if

§  CD4 count is lesser than 200 per cubic mm (normal is 500-1600) or

§  Developed one or more opportunistic infections regardless of the CD4 count.

·         Without treatment, people who are diagnosed with AIDS typically survive about 3 years.

·         Once someone has a dangerous opportunistic illness, life expectancy without treatment falls to about 1 year.

·          People with AIDS need medical treatment to prevent death.

                    There is no cure for HIV. But we can prevent the advance of HIV to AIDS by ART.