After HIV infection, some patients can have acute onset symptoms including fever, headache and malaise in as early as about 2 weeks, but they are not specific and some of them do not appear and go directly to the HIV latent period.
After the patient is infected with HIV, it hides in the lymphocytes and starts to enter the bloodstream around day 5 and replicates in large numbers in 2-3 weeks, which then destroys the body’s immunity and leads to a series of acute symptoms in the body. However, these symptoms are not specific, and when they improve, they are no different from normal people, and it is impossible to diagnose whether the body is infected with HIV based on these symptoms. Therefore, if a patient has had a high-risk exposure to HIV and has symptoms such as fever and rash of unknown origin in about 2-4 weeks, he or she must go to a hospital for an HIV-specific test to rule out the possibility of HIV infection.
When caring for patients with AIDS, we need to pay attention to sterilization and isolation, and communicate more with them to avoid their agitation and aggravation. When the patient has symptoms, the patient should be treated symptomatically according to the specific situation.