Tracking retroviral infection
Hello everyone,
I don't have AIDS, but I have long suffered from a retroviral muscle infection, which left me bedridden six years ago, thus forcing me to thoroughly study my illness. One of the results was measurements, the results of which, as I recently realized, should be universal for any retroviral infection.
I want to immediately clarify that I'm not referring to complex cases where several diseases are intertwined, for which such measurements are already commonly used (for example, peripheral arterial disease). I'm referring to AIDS as a single disease.
Below, I describe the eight numbers I suggest anyone interested in the progress of their retroviral infection should measure. Measurements can be taken either carefully using a specialized device or roughly using readily available contact measuring devices.
This is:
- systolic blood pressure in the left and right human calves,
- systolic blood pressure in the left and right biceps,
- skin temperature of the left and right human calves,
- skin temperature of the left and right biceps.
I think each of you is educated enough to understand these numbers independently. But if you need my commentary, please post these numbers in response to my post, along with two more: your age at the time of (presumed) HIV infection and your age at the time the above numbers were measured.
Prudent use of measurement results implies comparing them with each other. In this case, it's assumed that everyone knows the values of these measurements that correspond to a completely healthy individual. But since no one has even questioned this, I can conclude that people here are knowledgeable enough not to adhere to common misconceptions about how HIV is transmitted.
I would like to emphasize that I mean only the possibility of identifying the development of AIDS in the most general sense, allowing, among other things, for so-called “AIDS denialism,” which denies the connection between AIDS and HIV[1–4]. In other words, researchers, having discovered a certain virus, did not wait for the 7-year[5] period of AIDS development to pass, but rather received their rewards for an immediate victory over the newly discovered virus, which had virtually threatened a fatal disease, but in reality had caused numerous problems for its carriers, obscuring its main source. I have my own thoughts on this matter, but they go beyond the scope of the topic I have proposed.
References
1. Chigwedere P, Essex M. AIDS denialism and public health practice. AIDS Behav. 2010 Apr;14(2):237-47. doi: 10.1007/s10461-009-9654-7. PMID: 20058063.
2. Kalichman SC, Eaton L, Cherry C. "There is no proof that HIV causes AIDS": AIDS denialism beliefs among people living with HIV/AIDS. J Behav Med. 2010 Dec;33(6):432-40. doi: 10.1007/s10865-010-9275-7. Epub 2010 Jun 23. PMID: 20571892; PMCID: PMC3015095.
3. Nattrass N. Defending the boundaries of science: AIDS denialism, peer review and the Medical Hypotheses saga. Sociol Health Illn. 2011 May;33(4):507-21. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9566.2010.01312.x. Epub 2011 Feb 11. PMID: 21314689.
4. Smith TC. HIV Denial in the COVID Era. AIDS Behav. 2025 Jan;29(1):309-316. doi: 10.1007/s10461-024-04528-3. Epub 2024 Oct 12. PMID: 39395068; PMCID: PMC11739256.
5. Bangham CR, McMichael AJ. HIV infection. Why the long latent period? Nature. 1990 Nov 29;348(6300):388. doi: 10.1038/348388a0. PMID: 1978928.
