comments on this case

[niklasericsson]

Hi,

first of all I'd like to congratulate you on the high quality of this site. Opposite to most places it doesn't try to follow guidelines but rather focuses on scientific results (published?). So my post serves not only to get some feedback from you, but mostly to give a donation to an excellent information site that helped me on the understanding of various health related issues.

So, here goes my case:

I am a man living in Sweden an almost 12 weeks ago I had unprotected sex with a female. A couple of weeks after I noticed some STD symptoms and later on I was diagnosed with chlamydia. I was informed of this 8 1/2 weeks after the exposure. On the same day I started taking doxycycline and started feeling a mild fever and a flu-like feeling. A couple of days after (9 weeks mark) I did a HIV blood test that came negative. Meanwhile, I started reading about HIV symptoms and checking up my body for them. Never had rashes but felt stiffness on my neck and possibly swollen lymph nodes since week 10. Now I'm at week 11 1/2 and still feel the flu-like symptoms, the mild fever and the swollen lymph nodes and some "funny" feeling in my groin.

Now, from the research I've done on this site, chances of getting infected from vaginal intercourse are low (1:1000). Since she had chlamydia this might raise to 1:500 ( i was tested negative before). She was also tested negative for chlamydia 1 month before, but had at least 1 partner in between and she also tested negative for HIV about 1 year ago. So, there's both a chance that she was in the window period as well as she was not infected, that increases (1:10) and decreases the chances, respectively (1:500 if guy was infected times 1:100 that would be the % of people having chlamydia that also have HIV. could you please comment on this assumption?). So, I'll guess something around 1:250 000 now (does this seems reasonable??). Testing negative at week 9 has 99% reliability. We end now at 1:25 000 000. Ok, this got way too mathematical!

Now, the symptoms: as you often say, one should never rely on symptoms for assessing HIV. It is also interesting to realize that my symptoms appear on the same day I found out I had chlamydia. The throat symptoms appear after I started poking it. The fever might not even reach 38C (100F). The "funny" feeling most probably means nothing. Since in science one should always go for the most simple explanation, this one would be: these "symptoms" are just an anxiety result. And when a patient thinks it is anxiety-driven sicknesses it most probably is, right?

So, I was just wondering one thing. I understand that chances of having HIV symptoms after 8 weeks are extremely low. One thing that was not clear is if the seroconversion always comes after the HIV symptoms.

As you understood, this message serves not only as a contribution for the site itself, but also to other people in a similar situation. And of course it would be great to get comments on this!

Thanks in advance!

[Teak]

Well when someone can tell by odds and by looking at someone if they have HIV or not let me know. Until then, the only way you can ever know your status is by testing. What is the window period 3 month.  When can someone get a conclusive test result 3 month post exposure.

[snippets69]

I think this is for real, but I'm not positive...

[niklasericsson]

Didn't notice the expert HIV prevention forum was closed, and I was posting here instead. Will try later again there, but would still be interesting to get input from you.