Symptoms and testing

[highlyanxious]

Hello Doctor
If 2 weeks after a low risk oral exposure with a low risk female, Had no other symptoms due to moderate night sweats ( my sleeping t-shirt becomes wet at the chest and back, and also sweaty feet),no fever, no swollen lymphnodes, and no sore throat. I got tested for all std's including HIV at day 17 and all cameback negative. Would that prove that the night sweats prior to the test were not due to ARS symptoms and only due to anxiety?
Thank you for your response

[H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D.]

Night sweats alone are never a sign of HIV or any other infection.  Night sweats occur because of fever, which breaks during the night.  In other words, no fever, no night sweats.  True night sweats soak you, not just a little dampness.

HHH, MD

[rocky999]

Night sweats as a result of true ARS means "soaking wet", your whole body, not just a little sweat here and there.  Also, in all cases of true ARS, high and persistent fever is present.  Your symptoms don't sound like ARS and you state that your encounter was low risk.  Take care.

[strata]

It's doubtful that you had true night sweats, which are the result of high fever breaking during the night. More likely, you're just hot. Anxiety might play a part.

To see what Dr HHH has said in the past, search the archives: "true night sweats" hiv

At 17 days, roughly 40-50% of people would have seroconverted. To your question, if you HAD experienced night sweats due to ARS prior to the test, then we would expect that you would have seroconverted. HOWEVER, symptoms are notoriously unreliable for diagnosing HIV, so only a negative test at 6 weeks would be considered definitive.

Your overall risk is virtually non-existent (cunnilingus and insertive oral with a low risk female), so Dr HHH will likely say that no testing is warranted because of this exposure.

However, all sexually active people should be tested periodically. If you haven't been tested recently and are concerned about HIV (which is likely since you're here on medhelp), you might want to consider a follow-up test at 6 weeks.

[highlyanxious]

Doctor I understood your reply, but if they were due to an onset of an ARS would the test have revealed it 2 days after?
Thank you
Last question in this thread

[H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D.]

You can be 100% confident your sweats were not due to ARS.  But if they were, the answer is no.  The antibody test might take a few more days to become positive after onset of symptoms.

[stnetnoc]

A related discussion, HELp was started.