HIV/AIDS

AIDS

Signs and Symptoms
Diagnosis
Treatment

Diagnosis

People are diagnosed with AIDS when they have certain signs or symptoms defined by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC's definition of AIDS includes:

• Less than 200 CD4+ T cells per cubic millimeter of blood, compared with about 1,000 CD4+ T cells for healthy people. CD4+T cells are white blood cells that play an important role in the body's immune system. These cells are destroyed by HIV. Even when a HIV-positive person feels well and is not experiencing any symptoms of the disease, CD4+ T cells are being infected by HIV.

• CD4+ T cells accounting for less than 14 percent of all lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell.

• One of more of the illnesses listed below:
  

  • Candidiasis of bronchi, esophagus, trachea or lungs
  • Cervical cancer that is invasive
  • Coccidioidomycosis that has spread
  • Cryptococcosis that affecting the body outside the lungs
  • Cryptosporidiosis affecting the intestines and lasting more than a month
  • Cytomegalovirus disease outside of the liver, spleen or lymph nodes
  • Cytomegalovirus retinitis that occurs with vision loss
  • Encephalopathy that is HIV-related
  • Herpes simplex including ulcers lasting more than a month or bronchitis, pneumonitis or esophagitis
  • Histoplasmosis that has spread
  • Isosporiasis affecting the intestines and lasting more than a month month
  • Kaposi sarcoma
  • Lymphoma that is Burkitt type, immunoblastic or that is primary and affects the brain or central nervous system
  • Mycobacterium avium complex or disease caused by M kansasii
  • Mycobacterium tuberculosis in or outside the lungs
  • Other species of mycobacterium that has spread
  • Pneumocystis jiroveci, formerly called carinii, pneumonia
  • Pneumonia that is recurrent
  • Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy
  • Salmonella septicemia that is recurrent
  • Toxoplasmosis of the brain, also called encephalitis
  • Wasting syndrome caused by HIV infection

Symptoms also may include anxiety, dementia, depression and insomnia.

Illnesses that occur in children with AIDS but not in adults include:

• Multiple, recurrent bacterial infections
• Lymphoid interstitial pneumonia or pulmonary lymphoid hyperplasi

See more information on tests for HIV and AIDS.

Reviewed by health care specialists at UCSF Medical Center.
Last updated May 8, 2007