HIV infection diagnosis is sometimes associated with other chronic viral infections such as Hepatitis B and Hepatitis C, sometimes with bacterial infections such as tuberculosis and pneumonia, and sometimes with sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea and syphilis.
If more than one disease are detected, usually two infection treatments start simultaneously. In some specific cases, however, the other disease’s treatment starts first, then the HIV treatment. Sexually transmitted infections such as gonorrhea or syphilis can be cured with penicillin in a short time. If you’re diagnosed with genital wart (HPV) and surgery is required, your surgeons might wait for your viral load to drop to an undetectable level before the procedure.
One of the major questions of people who learned that they are living with HIV is: What happens next? What if I get sick? What if I get the flu? Most common thoughts we come across are that even the flu would seriously affect their health, be life-critical, and their treatment would delay and be harder due to the infection.
As everyone should, people living with HIV should also care about their health to not get sick. But you might still develop some seasonal or metabolical diseases. If you’re taking the treatment regularly and your viral load is undetectable, you can fight these new diseases like you used to, and recover. Living with HIV won’t affect your treatment duration. If you don’t have opportunistic infections as a result of immune system damage due to irregular treatment or discontinuation, developed diseases are not HIV-related (except diseases related with medication interaction).
During your treatment, your doctor will prescribe you with vaccination against some diseases such as pneumonia, flu, viral hepatitis. Never skip the vaccinations prescribed by your doctor.