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HIV infection

• Overview
• Symptoms
• Treatment
• Prevention

Alternative Names:

Human immunodeficiency virus infection

Treatment:

Drug therapy is often recommended for patients who are committed to taking all their medications and have a CD4 count between 200 and 350 (indicating immune system suppression).

It is extremely important that patients take all doses of their medications, otherwise the virus will rapidly become resistant to the medications. Therapy is always given with a combination of antiviral drugs.

People with HIV infection need to receive education about the disease and treatment so that they can be active partners in decision making with their health care provider.

Support Groups:

The stress of illness can often be helped by joining a support group where members share common experiences and problems. See AIDS - support group .

Expectations (prognosis):

HIV is a chronic medical condition that can be treated, but not yet cured. There are effective means of preventing complications and delaying, but not preventing, progression to AIDS. At the present time, not all persons infected with HIV have progressed to AIDS, but time has shown that the vast majority do.

Complications:

• Opportunistic infections
  • Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia
  • Candidiasis
  • Cytomegalovirus infection
  • Toxoplasmosis
  • Cryptococcus
  • Cryptosporidium enterocolitis (or other protozoal)
  • Mycobacterium avium complex (MAC)
  • Tuberculosis
  • Bacillary angiomatosis
  • Salmonella infection in the bloodstream
  • Progressive multi-focal leukoencephalopathy (viral infection of the brain)
• HIV dementia
• Malignancies (cancers)
• HIV lipodystrophy
• Chronic wasting from HIV infection

Calling your health care provider:

Call for an appointment with your health care provider if you have had a possible or actual exposure to AIDS or HIV infection.

• Review Date: 2/13/2006
• Reviewed By: Monica Gandhi, M.D., M.P.H., Assistant Professor, Division of Infectious Diseases, UCSF, San Francisco, CA. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network.

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