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A positive cryptococcal antigen test may precede symptoms by 3 weeks in those with HIV/AIDS. Others may have re-activation of latent cryptococcal disease years later. In those with HIV, approximately 50% of people have a fever, but fever is rare in previously healthy and immunocompetent people with cryptococcosis.
Some of the possible symptoms of chronic meningitis (due to any cause) include headache, nausea and vomiting, fever, and visual impairment. Nuchal rigidity (or neck stiffness with discomfort in trying to move the neck), a classic symptom in acute meningitis, was seen in only 45% of cases of chronic meningitis with the sign being even more rare in non-infectious causes.
Symptoms can range from mild to extreme—often described as extreme flu-like symptoms. Many symptoms may be associated with fungemia, including pain, acute confusion, chronic fatigue, and infections. Skin infections can include persistent or non-healing wounds and lesions, sweating, itching, and unusual discharge or drainage. [citation needed]
Immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome (IRIS) is a condition seen in some cases of HIV/AIDS or immunosuppression, in which the immune system begins to recover, but then responds to a previously acquired opportunistic infection with an overwhelming inflammatory response that paradoxically makes the symptoms of infection worse.
The eclipse period is a variable period starting from HIV exposure in which no existing test can detect HIV. The median duration of the eclipse period in one study was 11.5 days. The window period is the time between HIV exposure and when an antibody or antigen test can detect HIV. The median window period for antibody/antigen testing is 18 days.
Diagnosis of cryptococcal meningitis can be made at low cost using an India ink stain of the CSF; however, testing for cryptococcal antigen in blood or CSF is more sensitive. [ 55 ] [ 56 ] A diagnostic and therapeutic difficulty is "partially treated meningitis", where there are meningitis symptoms after receiving antibiotics (such as for ...
While most people will clear the virus and get a negative antigen test result within 10 days, some people may keep testing positive for longer than that, experts tell TODAY.com.
Cryptococcal antigen from cerebrospinal fluid is thought to be the best test for diagnosis of cryptococcal meningitis in terms of sensitivity, though it might be unreliable in HIV-positive patients. [12] The first genome sequence for a strain of C. neoformans (var. neoformans; now C. deneoformans) was published in 2005. [5]