What are the symptoms of early HIV infection?

Once you have been infected with HIV, the virus takes hold in your body and multiplies quickly. Your immune system responds by producing antibodies (proteins made by your immune system) in response to the virus. This period is known as seroconversion.

The antibodies will be in your blood within one to two weeks and will continue to increase in the months after infection.

Seroconversion often, but not always, causes a flu-like illness. It’s thought that more than six in every ten people with HIV experience one or more of these symptoms shortly after infection.

These symptoms typically appear within a month of infection and go away within two to three weeks.

Symptoms may include:

• fever
• swollen glands
• muscle aches
• tiredness
• body rash (usually reddish, small flat blemishes that are not itchy)
• oral thrush
• weight loss
• joint pains
• sore throat
• gastrointestinal symptoms, such as vomiting (being sick) and diarrhoea
• headache
• genital sores or thrush
• night sweats
• problems affecting the brain, nerve, or spine, such as meningitis or encephalitis.

The most commonly experienced symptoms are fever, swollen glands, muscle aches and tiredness.

These symptoms are not a good way to identify seroconversion, to diagnose HIV, or to rule it out. There are lots of other illnesses that can cause these symptoms. Many people do not notice any symptoms after infection.

An HIV test needs to be done in order to confirm HIV infection. This is the only reliable way of knowing whether you have HIV or not.