Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or AIDS, is the last and most severe stage of HIV Disease. Diagnosis can be done through saliva, blood or cells from within the cheek. The only way to find out if you indeed have this disease is to take an HIV test. A small amount of blood is taken and sent off to a lab to be tested. Other types of tests are able to check for HIV in oral fluid and urine. The test for urine is found to not be very sensitive and there are now two FDA approved test for oral fluids.
Home-use tests have not been approved by the FDA because they do not provide accurate results. These tests allow people to interpret their own tests in minutes at home. There is a Home Access test that has been approved and can be found at many drugstores. This is a blood test where blood is pricked out of the finger, placed on a card and then sent off to a laboratory for results
Someone is diagnosed with AIDS when they are experiencing specific symptoms or signs that are clearly defined by the CDC.
In diagnosing the AIDS disease it will include:
1. Less than 200 CD4+ cells for each cubic millimeter of blood
2. CD4+ T cells that are accounting for less than 14 percent of lymphocytes.
3. At least one of the following ailment, and this does not cover all of the possible ailments.
a. Candidiasis in respiratory area
b. Spreading of coccidioidomycosis
c. Invasive cervical cancer
d. HIV-related encephalopathy
e. Herpes simplex
f. Spreading of histoplasmosis
g. Recurrent pneumonia
h. Cryptococcosis outside of the lungs
i. HIV that has caused wasting syndrome
j. Encephalitils
k. Recurrent salmonella speticemia
l. Spreading mycobacterium
m. Kaposi sarcoma
n. Spreading histoplasmosis