The inflammatory response generated by your besieged immune system also can cause you to feel tired and lethargic. Fatigue can be both an early and later sign of HIV.
Ron, 54, a public relations executive in the Midwest, started to worry about his health when he suddenly got winded just walking. "Everything I did, I got out of breath," he says. "Before that I had been walking three miles a day."
Ron had tested HIV positive 25 years before feeling so tired; fatigue during acute, or newly contracted, HIV might not be so obvious.