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Diagnosis?
After asking about your history of exposure to
HIV-infected body fluids, your doctor will check
for signs and symptoms of HIV/AIDS and perform
a physical examination. Your doctor will look
for fever, weight loss, a thick white coating
on your tongue that may represent thrush (a sign
of opportunistic infection with Candida fungus),
Kaposi's sarcoma or other symptoms of AIDS.
Your doctor will confirm the diagnosis of HIV
infection through blood tests. The initial screening
test is an ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent
assay), which detects antibodies specific for
HIV. A Western blot test is then performed to
more accurately confirm the infection. If the
test results are positive, the HIV RNA blood test
can then measure viral load (the amount of HIV
virus in the blood). To confirm the diagnosis
of AIDS in someone who has HIV, your doctor will
order a blood test for CD4 cell count (a count
less than 200 cells indicates AIDS) and may also
perform tests to diagnose AIDS-related conditions,
including opportunistic infections, brain illness,
a tumor, body wasting or lung illness, depending
on the symptoms.
Because there is currently no cure, HIV infection
is a lifelong illness.
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