Pathfinder
Editor, Senior Moderator
What to Know About HIV After Charlie Sheen's Announcement
By BY GILLIAN MOHNEY Nov 17, 2015, 11:46 AM ET
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During an appearance this morning on NBC?s ?Today Show,? Sheen said he was diagnosed roughly four years ago after a series of debilitating headaches and excessive sweating episodes.
"I thought I had a brain tumor. I thought it was over," Sheen, 50, admitted. "It's a hard three letters to absorb. It's a turning point in one's life."
Dr. Larry Corey, a virologist and investigator at the nonprofit HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), said Sheen's experience of early HIV symptoms is common. After years in the body, the virus will start to have an effect on the immune system, which can lead to diagnosis.
?It?s fever, weight loss, headache, night sweats ? or an infection like shingles? that leads to HIV diagnosis, Corey, also president emeritus of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, told ABC News. ?A sense of loss of energy or fatigue or weight loss.?
Corey explained that despite medical advancements in treating the disease, HIV remains a huge problem in the United States. About 50,000 Americans are infected every year with the virus and up to 20 percent of those living with the disease aren?t aware they are infected.
There are an estimated 1.2 million Americans with the disease. Medications called anti-retrovirals were developed in the late 1990s and have since mostly prevented the disease from progressing to a fatal stage.
Corey said the medications have been so successful that the life span for a person with HIV is an estimated average of 40 years after diagnosis instead of an average of one year when the virus was first diagnosed in the early-1980s.
...
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/hiv-charlie-sheens-announcement/story?id=35252411
By BY GILLIAN MOHNEY Nov 17, 2015, 11:46 AM ET
...
During an appearance this morning on NBC?s ?Today Show,? Sheen said he was diagnosed roughly four years ago after a series of debilitating headaches and excessive sweating episodes.
"I thought I had a brain tumor. I thought it was over," Sheen, 50, admitted. "It's a hard three letters to absorb. It's a turning point in one's life."
Dr. Larry Corey, a virologist and investigator at the nonprofit HIV Vaccine Trials Network (HVTN), said Sheen's experience of early HIV symptoms is common. After years in the body, the virus will start to have an effect on the immune system, which can lead to diagnosis.
?It?s fever, weight loss, headache, night sweats ? or an infection like shingles? that leads to HIV diagnosis, Corey, also president emeritus of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, told ABC News. ?A sense of loss of energy or fatigue or weight loss.?
Corey explained that despite medical advancements in treating the disease, HIV remains a huge problem in the United States. About 50,000 Americans are infected every year with the virus and up to 20 percent of those living with the disease aren?t aware they are infected.
There are an estimated 1.2 million Americans with the disease. Medications called anti-retrovirals were developed in the late 1990s and have since mostly prevented the disease from progressing to a fatal stage.
Corey said the medications have been so successful that the life span for a person with HIV is an estimated average of 40 years after diagnosis instead of an average of one year when the virus was first diagnosed in the early-1980s.
...
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/hiv-charlie-sheens-announcement/story?id=35252411