HIV testing
Most people infected with HIV do not develop symptoms for 10 years or more. The symptoms are not reliable tools in determining whether you have been infected with HIV. The best possible method available at the moment is HIV testing. The most common used test is the HIV antibody test which detects the presence of anti-HIV antibodies. It is important to get tested after six months of a possible exposure to the virus to make sure that the antibodies have reached the detectable levels. The other two common tests used to detect HIV include RNA tests and combination test which detects both antibodies as well as the viral protein called p24 (Nettleman & Havlichek n.d.).
HIV positive
Being HIV positive does not necessary mean you have AIDS. There are factors that might slow down or speed up the progression from HIV infection to AIDS. The following include some of these factors: drug treatment, stress, genetic make-up, nutrition and malnutrition, pregnancy, effects of other diseases and environmental factors (Al-Jabri 2007).