What kind of abdominal pain can AIDS cause?

AIDS is a viral disease characterized by impaired cellular immunity.

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What happens in the body?

The disease is caused by human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). It affects lymphocytes and other cells. Infection leads to lymphopenia, a persistent decrease in lymphocytes.

Symptoms

The latent period between HIV infection and the onset of symptoms ranges from several months to 10 years. During this period, the disease can only manifest itself with more frequent infectious diseases.

Quite often, in patients, signs of damage to the small intestine may come to the fore: 60% of patients develop diarrhea . Diarrhea is diffuse, the frequency of stools is up to 25 times a day.

Most often, the infection occurs due to viral infections such as cytomegalovirus, herpes, which cause enterocolitis, proctitis , esophagitis, pancreatitis, respiratory tract damage, and extensive skin ulcers.

Of the bacterial infections, the most typical are salmonellosis , pneumonia, tuberculosis and syphilis.

Candidiasis and other fungal infections often develop.

Often, HIV infection leads to the development of the visceral form of Kaposi's sarcoma. In this case, dull aching pain below the navel, diarrhea, steatorrhea and gastrointestinal bleeding appear.

Routes of infection

Unlike other viral diseases, AIDS is not transmitted through normal contact with an infected person. The disease is transmitted sexually or through contaminated syringes during injections.

Those at risk include homosexuals, drug addicts, recipients of contaminated blood and children of HIV-infected parents.

Indications for testing for AIDS include chronic diarrhea, weight loss combined with enlargement of at least two groups of lymph nodes and fever.

Diagnostics

The most effective method currently is to detect antibodies to HIV in the blood. If the result is positive, the patient’s blood is sent for testing using a more accurate reaction, the so-called immune blocking. Only after confirmation in immune blocking can the fact of infection with AIDS be considered proven.