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General: Symptoms of HIV are the same for pregnant women as the rest of the HIV–infected population. Initial infection: Many patients experience no symptoms when they first become infected with HIV. After one or two months, it is common for individuals to experience flu–like symptoms including headache, fever, fatigue, and enlarged lymph nodes. Infants who become infected during birth may also experience delayed physical development, as well as intermittent diarrhea. These symptoms usually subside after one week to one month, and they are often mistaken for another viral infection. Despite having minimal or no symptoms during this stage, individuals are very infectious and the virus is present in large quantities in bodily fluids including blood, semen, vaginal discharge, and breast milk. Clinical latency: During the next stage, known as clinical latency, more serious symptoms develop. Once infected with HIV, it may take 10 or more years for more severe symptoms to appear in adults or up to two years in children who are born with HIV infection. As the immune system continues to weaken, many symptoms appear, including swollen lymph nodes that may be enlarged for long periods of time. Other symptoms often experienced months to years before the onset of AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) include fatigue, weight loss, frequent fevers and sweats, persistent or frequent yeast infections (of the mouth or vagina), skin rashes, flaky skin, pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) in women and short–term memory loss. In addition, patients have an increased risk developing shingles (painful nerve disease) or frequent and severe herpes infections that cause sores on the mouth, genitalia, or anus. Infected children may grow slowly or be sick often. AIDS: Patients progress to AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome) when their CD4 cell (immune cells that HIV infects and destroys) counts drops below 200 cells per microliter of blood. Healthy individuals have a CD4 cell count between 600 and 1,200 cells per microliter of blood. Some individuals will develop AIDS when they become infected with an AIDS–defining illness like Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia (formerly called Pneumocystis carinii or PCP). The first symptoms of AIDS often include moderate and unexplained weight loss, recurring lung infections, and ulcers in the mouth. During this stage, the patient is most vulnerable to developing opportunistic infections and tumors like Mycobacterium tuberculosis, thrush, herpes viruses, cytomegalovirus (CMV), shingles, Epstein–Barr virus, Kaposi's sarcoma (type of cancer), and pneumonia.
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