HIV is a life-threatening disease caused by human immunodeficiency virus. The Stage 3 HIV infection is called AIDS. There are about 1.2 millions HIV positive people living in the United States in 2010, according to the Index Mundi website. The definition and diagnosis requirements for HIV and AIDS are quite different. It is much easier to say when a person has HIV than when the HIV has turned into AIDS. Many HIV patients never develop AIDS.
Diagnosis Requirements
To diagnose a person with HIV, all you need is a simple blood test to determine if the virus is present. This process is, however, more complex for diagnosing AIDS. To determine if a patient is suffering from AIDS, the levels of CD4 cells are tested based on a count per set quantity of blood. According to the AIDS website, a healthy person has 500 to 1,600 CD4 cells in a cubic mm of blood in his body. In order for a person to be diagnosed with AIDS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention requires that the standard of a CD4 cell count is below 200 cells per cubic mm, and the total count of CD4 cells falls below 14 percent of all lymphocytes.
The Immune System
A feature that separates HIV from AIDS is how the immune system of those suffering from one of the conditions differs from those being treated to alleviate the other. The immune system of an HIV patient behaves much in the same way as a healthy individual's would. It can effectively fight off viruses and bacteria that the body comes in contact with and is rarely jeopardized in the process. However, the immune system of someone who suffers from AIDS is radically different. AIDS patients suffer from illnesses that healthy people could have easily fought off. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, these illnesses are called opportunistic infections. In order for an HIV patient to be diagnosed with AIDS he is required to suffer from these kinds of illnesses. A list of these illnesses includes 29 conditions that are used to define the presence of AIDS. Most of these are infections, but some cancer types, such as lymphoma and cervical dysplasia, do not follow this pattern. Some infections included in the list are herpes simplex, human papilloma, tuberculosis and syphilis. A diagnosis of one of these illnesses does not mean that a person has HIV.
Initial Symptoms
HIV and AIDS cause different initial symptoms. According to the Drugs website, it is often characteristic for HIV to show no symptoms in its beginning stages. Two to six weeks after this virus first enters the body, flulike symptoms can sometimes appear. Some of these symptoms include fever, sore throat and headaches. These symptoms last for a few days and most patients neither look for medical help nor do they suspect that they might have HIV as a result of their symptoms. However, as the disease progresses, the immune system gradually weakens. Once AIDS has been brought on, symptoms caused by opportunistic infections appear rather quickly and remain frequent afterward. These symptoms can include weight loss, persistent high temperature, chronic diarrhea, night sweats, lymph glands that remain swollen for weeks or longer and fatigue.
