Yinzibing: A New AIDS-Like Infectious Disease
Yinzibing (阴滋病, “unknown STI infection”, “HIV-negative AIDS”, “disease X”) is an insufficiently understood and largely uncharacterized infectious disease first reported in China. Patients present with a broad systemic clinical picture resembling HIV/AIDS, including immune dysregulation, chronic mucosal inflammation, neurological symptoms, and progressive organ involvement, yet consistently test negative for HIV and standard STI or STD panels. Since approximately 2023, reports of clinically identical cases have emerged from Germany, France, Russia, the United States, India, and Japan, suggesting active global spread.”
Yinzibing patients report that the incubation period of the Chinese HIV-like virus is about 2 days (though some patients claim it is around 7 days). The incubation period is defined as the time it takes for the first acute symptoms (like a sore throat) to appear after initial exposure to the virus.
Yinzibing patients often report catching the virus while having sex (sometimes with a prostitute), and so may assume yinzibing is a sexually transmitted disease. However, the virus is present in the saliva, and so may actually be transmitted by the French kissing that often takes place during sex, rather than being transmitted by sexual intercourse.
Most viruses are only substantially contagious during the acute phase of the infection (the acute phase starts when symptoms first appear, and then lasts for a few days to a week or so). For most viruses, after the acute phase ends, the contagiousness also ends, or greatly diminishes. But people with yinzibing may remain mildly infectious for years, transmitting the virus to other people well after the acute phase is over.
So once someone catches the Chinese HIV-like virus, over the next few weeks or months, the virus may slowly spread to the people around them, just by normal social contact. The virus will typically transmit to people living in the same home, to friends, and to work colleagues. If a person with yinzibing French kisses someone, this is a rapid way of spreading the virus.
Because this virus is often caught during sex, some yinzibing patients become fearful that they may have caught HIV, and their worry leads them to take repeated HIV blood tests — sometimes taking 10 or more HIV tests — even though each test shows negative results. Because of this behaviour, some doctors in China originally dubbed yinzibing as the fear of AIDS virus.
But several laboratories in China and the USA, including the Chinese CDC and the Pasteur Institute of Shanghai, investigated patients with yinzibing and determined that this virus is not HIV. So this fear of AIDS is unwarranted.
Nevertheless, although yinzibing patients test negative for HIV, some patients are found to have low CD4 cell counts (similar to the low CD4 in AIDS), and yinzibing also seems to involve a persistent ongoing infection and a chronic health deterioration, so in that respect, the virus is HIV-like.
The identity of the Chinese HIV-like virus has remained elusive, but an unpublished metagenomic sequencing study in the UK completed in 2024 suggests that yinzibing might actually be a virus called percavirus.
Percavirus is a virus from the gamma herpes sub-family (this sub-family also includes Epstein-Barr virus). Percavirus normally infects horses, and may cause immunosuppression. The UK study found percavirus in the saliva of every yinzibing patient tested, but this virus was not found in any of the healthy control subjects. This suggests that percavirus could well be the identity of the Chinese HIV-like virus.
Do not diagnose yourself. If you have concerning symptoms, consult a doctor; the information on this page is provided for general informational purposes only.
Symptoms of Yinzibing
The following list of yinzibing symptoms has been compiled from multiple sources, including published studies on yinzibing, media articles about yinzibing, and the blogs of yinzibing patients. An individual with yinzibing may not have all these symptoms, but will experience many of them.
General Symptoms
Fatigue and weakness • Poor sleep • Easily awoken from sleep • Chronic low-grade fever • Night sweats • Weight loss.
Throat and Mouth
Chronic sore throat • Permanent thick white tongue coating, sometimes with red spots on tip of tongue • Recurrent oral ulcers.
Gums and Teeth
Receding gums (periodontitis) • Bloodshot (red, inflamed) gums • Bleeding gums • Brown dental plaque may appear on teeth.
Eyes
Red bloodshot eyes (conjunctivitis) may appear when first catching the virus • Blurred vision.
Skin
Red rash (purpura rash) • Peeling skin • Skin may become dry • Rapidly ageing skin • Loss of subcutaneous fat (lipodystrophy or lipoatrophy) • Subcutaneous nodules may appear.
Nails and Hair
Nail loss • Hair loss • After some years, body hair may become thin and fall out.
Torso
Chest pain • Chest tightness • Back pain • Shortness of breath • Fast heart rate (tachycardia).
Muscles and Peripheral Nerves
Sensation of insects crawling under the skin (formication) • Constantly twitching muscles (fasciculations) • Muscle pain.
Hands and Feet
Cold hands and feet • Hand and foot numbness.
Joints and Bones
Joints make grinding, creaking, crunching, cracking, clicking or popping sounds when moved (crepitus is the medical term for this sound) • Pain in the joints (arthralgias) • Bone pain (osteodynia).
Stomach and Intestines
Chronic flatulence • Recurrent stomach ache • Abdominal pain • Chronic diarrhoea in early stage of infection • Belching and burping (due to excess stomach gas) • Loose formless stools • Melena (dark slimy stools).
Lymph Nodes
Chronically swollen lymph nodes • Lymph node pain.
Organs
Organ pathologies may appear (in the liver, gallbladder, kidney, lung and intestines) • Thyroid enlargement (thyroid hypertrophy).
Neurological
Dizziness • Tinnitus • Reduction of hearing acuity • Headache • Some patients may experience an episode of meningitis • Poor memory and a dulled mind.
Immunological
Some Chinese HIV-like virus patients may have a low CD4 cell count, inverted CD4/CD8 ratio, and low complement C3 and C4.
Effect of Yinzibing on Children
Child development may be retarded • Girls' menstrual periods may be disrupted.
Prognosis
For patients infected with the Chinese HIV-like virus, the first year or two is usually the most difficult. After this period, many patients report a marked improvement in their condition. They may not achieve a complete recovery, but many recover to around 90% after a year or two. And low CD4 counts may return to normal within a few years. However, not all yinzibing patients attain recovery; some continue to struggle with yinzibing indefinitely.
How can we explain this spontaneous recovery? Well a 2019 study suggests yinzibing may be an unusual form of myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) — a known disease that is usually triggered by certain viral infections, such as Epstein-Barr virus or coxsackievirus B.
In some people, after ME/CFS symptoms are triggered by a virus, the illness eventually clears itself up after 6 to 24 months. In these cases where recovery occurs, the illness is usually described as post-viral fatigue syndrome rather than ME/CFS. But for other people, the ME/CFS symptoms never clear up, and they continue suffering with ME/CFS indefinitely. Yinzibing seems to follow this same pattern: many people with yinzibing get better after around a year or two, but others remain ill long-term. So the fact that many yinzibing patients recover is in keeping with the idea that yinzibing may be a form of ME/CFS.
For those who have just developed yinzibing, the hardest part is getting through the first year or two of terrible symptoms, and waiting for the symptoms to hopefully largely disappear.