I am sorry. It seems I ended up in the wrong forum. I would appreciate if you still consider my questions appropriately.
Thank you.
As you know, you have posted on the wrong site. Questions about HIV belong on the HIV prevention site. I will do my best to answer your questions with this reply but, if you have additional questions or follow-up they must be on the HIV Prevention site. Sorry
You state you "know" much about what I am going to see but you seem to have missed our repeated statements that the symptoms of the ARS are TOTALLY non-specific and when people experience "ARS symptoms" they are much more likely to have something else, usually some other, more typical virus infection. When this has been studied in the US, less than 1% of persons seeking medical care for "ARS symptoms" are found to have HIV, the remainder having symptoms due to other processes. In contrast, over a given year, there is almost no one who has not had a viral illness, night sweats or both (sometimes on multiple occasions). In your case your symptoms were late for the ARS, the rash has lasted unusually long for ARS and your test at 8 weeks (4 weeks following the onset of your symptoms) rules out that your symptoms were due to ARS. Your symptoms were NOT ARS. Now, in answer to your specific questions:
1. Yes, the statistics we quote are descriptive of the performance of the Siemens’s test you mention.
2. No, anxiety drugs have NO effect on seroconversion.
3. No, stress related changes in hormone production do not produce enough steroids to effect antibody development.
4. No, the rash of ARS typically lasts less than 2 weeks an in most cases less than a week.
5. No it is not related to antibody production.
Hope these answers are helpful to you. Given your test results it is very, very unlikely that you have HIV and the symptoms you describe are certainly not due to HIV. Take care. EWH
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