New HIV-Like Virus Emerging in China

Yinzibing: A New AIDS-Like Infectious Disease

This website details an emerging new virus, referred to as the Chinese HIV-like virus, which can cause the AIDS-like illness of yinzibing.

The Chinese HIV-like virus is spread by saliva, and is very contagious through French kissing, and also contagious by normal social contact. Chinese newspaper reports about yinzibing first started to appear in 2009, though the virus was likely in circulation in China for some years before that. Although this virus originated in China, it has since spread to many other countries.

The Chinese HIV-like virus can cause what has been described as a chronic AIDS-like deterioration in health in susceptible individuals who catch it. Though many people catch this virus without experiencing any symptoms, or only experiencing minor symptoms.

The information presented in this website comes from published scientific studies on yinzibing, as well as from Chinese laboratory reports, Chinese hospital reports, Chinese and English media articles, as well as the web forums and blogs of infected patients.

A Chinese epidemiological study found the chronic physical symptoms of yinzibing can include: crunching or popping noises from the joints when moved (crepitus) in 73% of patients, a thick white tongue coating in 71% of patients, twitching muscles (fasciculations) in 68%, dry skin in 60%, burping and flatulence in 57%, chronic sore throat in 56%, easily awoken from sleep in 53%, loose formless stool in 45%, red skin nodules (raised lumps on the skin) in 32%, bone pain in 27%, and cold hands and feet in 22%.

This study found that the early symptoms of the Chinese HIV-like virus can include: sore throat in 91%, reduced body weight in 76%, dizziness, headache, fatigue in 64%, dark yellow urine in 56%, conjunctivitis in 53%, intestinal rumbling sounds and bloating in 52%, swollen lymph nodes in 46%, chest pain and abdominal pain in 43%, red skin nodules in 32%, and low grade fever 30%.

Some Chinese patients report that yinzibing may induce mental symptoms such as anxiety and depression.

The Chinese HIV-like virus transmits by saliva. Just by normal social contact, this virus tends to infect other members of a household within a few weeks or months once one household member has caught it. However, most people who catch the virus will only have minor symptoms or have no symptoms at all; only a small percentage of individuals who catch the virus develop the illness of yinzibing.

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.

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 (see pictures of symptoms) • 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 (see pictures of symptoms) • Skin may become dry • Rapidly ageing skin • Loss of subcutaneous fat (lipodystrophy or lipoatrophy) • Subcutaneous nodules may appear (see pictures of symptoms).

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. More information about the immunological abnormalities found in yinzibing patients here. 

Effect of Yinzibing on Children

Child development may be retarded • Girls' menstrual periods may be disrupted.

Transmission of the Chinese HIV-Like Virus 

The Chinese HIV-like virus is present in saliva, and person-to-person transmission of the virus can occur if saliva from an infected person enters the mouth of another person. This is why French kissing is a fast way of transmitting this virus. But the virus can also spread by normal social contact, because tiny drops of saliva from an infected person may be expelled from their mouth while they are talking or coughing, and can land in another person’s mouth, lips, or on any food or drink they are consuming. Also, an infected person may touch their mouth and then shake hands with someone else, who may then touch their lips, thereby transferring the virus.

People with yinzibing may remain mildly contagious for years, so there can be plenty of opportunities for the virus to transmit to people in close social contact with the yinzibing patient.

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. 

References for the above-listed yinzibing symptoms are found here. Information on this page is sourced from the published studies on yinzibing listed here, and from the yinzibing media articles and patient forums listed here.