The early HIV symptoms are quite difficult to detect and occur like any normal infection inside our body.

The HIV is the major cause of the dreaded disease “AIDS”.A person who is carrying HIV may not even come to know about it as it is very difficult to comprehend this infection. The early symptoms of HIV infection do not appear always. They probably are diagnosed to around 60 - 70 % of people, but most of the people remain well. And even if they appear then it is such that they tend to develop somewhere between 2 and 12 weeks after the infection. Any early HIV symptoms occurring before the specified time are almost negligible. The only tool to diagnose HIV is undergoing an HIV test.

How to recognize the early HIV symptoms?

The HIV infected victims tend to develop a flu-like illness within a month or two after exposure to the virus.

Some of the early HIV symptoms are:

All the above stated symptoms are similar to the ordinary infections that occur in our body but actually the onset of the HIV infection and are not the ordinary infections.Infact, even if early HIV symptoms exist, they are seen after a period of 2 weeks to 3 months after unsafe sexual encounters or may be some medical infections. During the period of the early HIV symptoms patients are highly infectious, and the amount of HIV present is large in the genital fluids.

Over a period of time the immune system tends to worsen and different types of complications start to develop. It has been observed that for a large number of people, the early symptoms of HIV infection are the enlarged lymph nodes or better known as "swollen glands" (whose function is to remove bacteria) and begin to deteriorate. They tend to swell up for a period of more than three months. Other symptoms include the following:

• energy loss
• loss of appetite followed by weight loss
• Frequent fevers and sweats
• frequent yeast infections (oral or vaginal)
• skin rashes or flaky skin
• Pelvic inflammatory disease (in women) that does not respond to treatment
• Short-term memory loss

Some people also start developing severe and frequent herpes infections which lead to mouth, genital, or anal sores, or a condition of a painful nerve disease called shingles. In children growth may be less or they tend to be ill quiet often.

Some of the other symptoms of the HIV infection include chest infections, pain in the muscles and joints, mouth ulcers, and diarrhea. HIV itself is not the cause of all the illnesses above but rather the major cause is the weakened immune system that makes the body almost unable to protect itself from other diseases. As the CD4+ T cell count begins to drop, the victim finds his body condition deteriorates continuously and finally results in death.