Objective: To summarize the clinical characteristics of AIDS phobia patients and establish the preliminary clinical diagnostic criteria.
Methods: The clinical information of 46 AIDS phobia patients was collected and summarized. General demographic data, clinical manifestations and laboratory results were analyzed.
Results: The clinical characteristics of AIDS phobia patients include: (1) With or without high-risk behavior of HIV-1 infection; (2) Patients repeatedly demanded HIV/AIDS related laboratory tests, suspected or believed in HIV-1 infection with daily life affected; (3) The main complaints were non-specific including influenza-like symptoms (headache, sore throat and so on), fasciculation, formication, arthrodynia, fatigue and complaint of fever with normal body temperature; physical examination did not reveal any positive physical sign except white coated tongue; (4) Symptoms mainly appeared 0-3 months after the high-risk behavior while HIV-1 antibody kept negative; (5) T lymphocyte subsets test was carried out in 23 patients and showed 19 (82.6%) with CD(4)(+) T lymphocyte count > 500/µl, the remaining 4 were 300 - 500/µl, with the lowest count of 307/µl. Few patients had inversed CD(4)(+)/CD(8)(+) ratio but without excessive CD(8)(+)T lymphocyte activation.
Conclusions: AIDS phobia is a complicated physical and mental disease, whose diagnosis and treatment still need further investigation.