visagrunt wrote:
Well, from a medical perspective, this looks like lousy reporting to me.
Clearly these people are sick. But that is as far as we can conclude. As for the pathology, the evidence of transmission suggests infectious disease (I would be suprised to see a psychosomatic condition that provided that consistency and gravity of presentation, but it is not outside the realms of the possibe).
To describe it as "AIDS-like" appears to me to be fallacious. HIV destroys the human immune system. But HIV disease is not the immediate cause of death for patients--it is one or more opportunistic infections that take hold because the body has no way of fighting them. Reading this report, I see nothing to suggest that these patients are presenting opportunistic infections--nor even that their CD4+ T cell count is down.
While it is true that after HIV seroconversion, there are symptoms of illness (sore throat, night sweats, fever, fatigue, etc.) that can last a few weeks. However, the symptoms are generally non-specific, different patients will present different symptoms, and some will present none at all, and among those who do present symptons, they usually only lasts for a few weeks, so it is almost never recognized as actute HIV infection. Most patients presenting these symptoms will be diagnosed with another infectious disease.
What sort of disease do you think it may be? How are their symptoms unlike AIDS??
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-James Baldwin