How Is Hiv Transmitted Through Needles
HIV isnt transmitted only through sexual contact. Sharing needles also puts a person at higher risk of contracting HIV.
When a needle is injected into a persons body, it breaks the skin barrier. If the needle has already been injected into another person, it can carry traces of their blood, along with any infections they have. The contaminated needle can introduce these infections into the second persons body.
Researchers dont know if having an undetectable viral load reduces the risk of HIV transmission through shared needles, but its reasonable to assume it may provide some risk reduction.
HIV can affect anyone. Whatever their age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or race, everyone should take steps to protect themselves. But due to socioeconomic factors, some demographic groups have higher HIV transmission rates and generally are more affected by HIV.
According to the CDC , the general demographic traits most affected by HIV are:
Transgender women are also highly impacted by HIV transmissions as a population, reports the CDC .
These groups are disproportionately affected by HIV, but they arent inherently at greater risk of contracting HIV. An individuals personal risk depends on their behaviors, not on their age, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, or any other demographic factor.
Sexual Behaviors Among Different Sexual Roles
Bivariate analyses showed significant differences in risky sexual behaviours among the 3 subgroups.
Compared with the tops and the versatiles, the bottoms reported their first sexual encounter at an earlier age and were more likely to report a male as their first sexual partner . They were more likely to be engaged in oral sex in the past 6 months and mostly without using condom during oral sex . The bottoms were less likely to report sex with a woman in the past 6 months .
No 5 Having Vaginal Sex : 1 In 2500
A woman who is HIV positive can transmit the virus to her male partner through vaginal fluid and blood, which may pass through the urethra , the foreskin , or any open sores on the penis.
- Reduce the risk. Using a condom and water- or silicone-based lubricants, which can help lessen the chance that condoms will break or slip can help reduce a mans risk of getting HIV from an HIV-positive partner. Female condoms, which are made of a synthetic latex called nitrile and fit into the vagina during sex, are as protective as male condoms.
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How Homelessness Among Lgbtq People Ties In To Hiv
Homelessness is a major risk factor for acquiring HIV. People who experience homelessness are not only at a much higher risk for acquiring HIV, they are also much less likely to receive HIV medical treatment, and they have worse health outcomes than people with HIV who have housing.
Unfortunately, LGBTQ peopleespecially LGBTQ youthare much more likely to experience homelessness than the general population. LGBTQ youth are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than their cisgender, straight counterparts. And though LGBTQ people do not comprise 40% of the population, LGBTQ youth comprise 40% of all homeless youth.
LGBTQ homeless youth experience many other hardships that are considered risk factors for acquiring HIV, including poor mental health, minority stress, substance use, unprotected sex, and survival sex.
Within the LGBTQ youth population, a persons identity can affect how they experience homelessness and the factors that lead to homelessness. For instance:
Homelessness among young gay and bisexual men has been connected with a greater lifetime risk for HIVmeaning the risk extends much longer than their period of homelessness. Young gay and bisexual men who run away from home engage in oral and anal sex on average one year younger than non-runaway young gay and bisexual men. They are also more likely to experience forced sexual contact, get diagnosed with an STI, and use drugs, including injection drugs.
Young Womens Lack Of Access To Healthcare
In many settings, where SRH and HIV services exist, they are primarily for married women with and do not meet the specific needs of unmarried young women and adolescent girls. Healthcare providers often lack the training and skills to deliver youth-friendly services and do not fully understand laws around the age of consent.20
In 45 countries, organisations cannot legally provide SRH and HIV services to people under 18 without parental consent.21 In some countries, doing this is an offence linked to encouraging prostitution or the trafficking of minors.22 Some national laws also require healthcare providers to report underage sex or activities such as drug use among adolescents.23
Closely related to this is the finding, taken from evidence gathered in 28 sub-Saharan Africa countries, that 52% of adolescent girls and young women in rural areas and 47% in urban areas are unable to make decisions about their own health.24
As a result of age restrictions, in Kenya, Rwanda and Senegal, over 70% of unmarried sexually active girls aged 15 to 19 have not had their contraception needs met.25 This is despite the fact that in sub-Saharan Africa around half of young women living in rural areas and around 40% of young women living in urban areas will have been pregnant by the time they reach 18.26
Adolescent girls and young women belonging to groups most affected by HIV are also negatively affected by laws that criminalise injecting drug use, sex work and homosexuality.3031
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Hiv Testing And Counselling For Women And Adolescent Girls
A major gap in HIV service provision for women can be found in HIV testing and counselling , which is a vital gateway to treatment services.
A study conducted in Tanzania between 2003 and 2012 found that young women who were married were more likely to get tested than young women who were not. It also found antenatal care to be an important determinant for HIV testing. Women who had received antenatal care were more likely to get tested as compared with young women who had not given birth. Young women with primary and/or secondary education were also more likely than those without any formal education to test for HIV.70
Mental Health: A Major Issue Affecting Hiv In Lgbtq Communities
LGBTQ people are disproportionately at risk for a variety of mental health issues, including major depression, bipolar disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. These issues can lead to detrimental outcomes, like drug use, suicideand, of course, HIV.
Poor LGBTQ mental health comes from a myriad of factors. Some are societal, including the stigma and shame associated in some communities with having a queer or transgender identity. Others are interpersonal, like the need to stay in the closet or the fear of being outed. Often, queer and transgender children are told that they are not good at performing their assigned gender, which can lead them to internalize a sense of failure early in their lives.
Most of the research studying LGBTQ people and mental health centers around gay and bisexual men. Researchers tend to consider mental illness and HIV to be a syndemic in gay and bisexual men, meaning they intertwine with one anothereach epidemic perpetuates the other. Depression, trauma, and substance use are all linked to HIV acquisition risk in different ways.
In addition, as with so many other health disparities in the U.S., racism worsens the impact of mental health issues on people living with HIV.
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Treatments That Help Reduce The Risk Of Hiv Transmission
If your partner is HIV positive, talk to your doctor about whether you should start taking a medication called pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. These pills, which help prevent HIV from establishing itself in the body, can reduce a persons risk of permanent infection by up to 92 percent if taken consistently, according to the CDC.
If youre HIV negative and believe you might have been exposed to the virus, you can take an emergency medication called post-exposure prophylaxis, or PEP, which can lower your odds of being permanently infected with HIV. In order to work as effectively as possible, the medication has to be started within 72 hours of exposure and must be taken consistently once or twice a day for 28 days.
Finally, if your partner is HIV positive, he or she can drastically reduce the odds of passing along the virus by taking antiretroviral therapy, or ART. These medications can lower the amount of HIV that resides in the body to a level thats undetectable by modern testing. An international study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in July 2016 found that none of the more than 1,000 HIV-positive people whose levels were undetectable passed the virus to their HIV-negative partners during unprotected anal or vaginal sex during an average of two years.
How Can You Prevent Getting Or Transmitting Hiv Through Sex
There are several ways to prevent getting or transmitting HIV through anal or vaginal sex.
If you are HIV-negative, you can use HIV prevention medicine known as pre-exposure prophylaxis or post-exposure prophylaxis to protect yourself. You can also use other HIV prevention methods, below.
If you have HIV, the most important thing you can do to prevent transmission and stay healthy is to take your HIV medicine , every day, exactly as prescribed. People living with HIV who take HIV medicine daily as prescribed and get and keep an undetectable viral load have effectively no risk of sexually transmitting HIV to their HIV-negative partners. Read more about Treatment as Prevention. There also are other options to choose from, below.
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Hiv Can Spread Through Sexual Contact Between Women
During the study, the team gave the couples condoms and taught them other ways to prevent passing along HIV to their partner. But in 137 couples, transmission did occur sometime during the decade. In these cases, the team compared the viruses of the newly infected person with those of the partner.
They found that HIV was most likely to be transmitted when its genetic code had a particular pattern. These versions of the HIV genes seem to make the virus good at initially infecting and replicating within a person.
Turned out, this pattern is the average DNA sequence that scientists find when they examine HIV strains in people from around the globe. “The average sequence in the population is probably average because it works best, and we found that that is true,” says Jonathan Carlson, a computational biologist at Microsoft Research, who contributed to the study.
To establish a long-term infection through sexual contact, an HIV virus must first infect a single cell on the genitals. Then the virus multiples and spreads to adjacent cells. “Fitter” viruses are more efficient at infecting new cells and then replicating themselves, Carlson says.
And the higher the initial barrier to this initial infection, the fitter the virus has to be to complete this process.
“What was most striking was that risk factors that were known to affect the risk of transmission affected the selection,” says Eric Hunter, a virologist at Emory University, who also contributed to the study.
Why Do Gay Men Have An Increased Risk Of Hiv
In the United States, gay men are at a disproportionately high risk of getting HIV and AIDS. In 2016, 68% of all HIV infections in the U.S. affected men who have sex with men. The risk is even higher for gay black men. Why are gay men more likely to get HIV?
There are several reasons why gay and bisexual men are at higher risk of HIV than their straight counterparts. Some of the reasons are based on certain types of sex that result in greater risk of infection due to how HIV is biologically transmitted. Other reasons reflect social realities about how men who have sex with men live in the world and are treated by society.
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Will Treating Stds Prevent Me From Getting Hiv
No. Its not enough.
If you get treated for an STD, this will help to prevent its complications, and prevent spreading STDs to your sex partners. Treatment for an STD other than HIV does not prevent the spread of HIV.
If you are diagnosed with an STD, talk to your doctor about ways to protect yourself and your partner from getting reinfected with the same STD, or getting HIV.
Laws Addressing Gender Inequality And Violence Against Women
Laws and policies that promote gender equality create an environment that increases the likelihood of success and sustainability of efforts to reduce violence against women and their vulnerability to HIV.120121
As of 2016, 74% of countries legislated against intimate partner violence against women. Around 72% had laws relating to physical violence, 56% had laws relating to sexual violence, 71% had laws relating to psychological control and 46% addressed economic control. However, 20% of countries did not recognise rape as a crime in cases where the perpetrator is married, or intends to marry, the victim.122 For more information see our page.
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Male Circumcision May Lower Hiv Infection Risk
For the study, which appears in the Feb. 15 issue of The Journal of Infectious Diseases, researchers collected information on sexual behavior from 745 Kenyan truck drivers.
The men were tested for HIV infection and evaluated for circumcision status at the start of the study and followed from 1993 to 1997.
During the course of the study, the truck drivers provided information concerning the number of sexual encounters with wives, casual partners, and prostitutes and were screened for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.
At the end of the study, researchers calculated the probability of HIV infection per sex act using published data on the rates of HIV infection among the three types of sexual partners.
The results showed that the probability of the men in the study becoming infected with HIV after a single act of sexual intercourse was about one in 160. But uncircumcised men had more than twice the rate of HIV infection per sex act compared with circumcised men, one in 80 vs. one in 200.
Researchers say the rate of HIV infection from women to men in this study was much higher than in previous studies of couples in which the woman was infected and the man was not.
They say the higher HIV infection rates among men with multiple simultaneous sexual partners may help explain the rapid spread of HIV in Africa, where multiple sexual partners are common and male circumcision is rare.
The Journal of Infectious Diseases
Young Gay And Bisexual Men Are More Likely To Engage In Risky Sexual Practices
The two most basic steps to preventing an HIV infection, beyond abstinence, are to limit the number of sexual partners and use a condom. But research shows young gay men are much less likely to practice safe sex.
The CDC survey of high school students found that sexually active male students who have sex with men are both less likely to use a condom and more likely to have had sex with four or more partners during their lifetime than male students who had sex with only women.
As the chart above shows, these trends are dramatic: young men who had sex with men were roughly 50 percent more likely to report having four or more partners than young men who only had sex with women, and nearly twice as likely to report not using a condom during their last sexual encounter.
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What Are My Chances Of Contracting Hiv
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What is HIV?
Human immunodeficiency virus attacks and weakens the immune system, making an individual more vulnerable to serious illness. Untreated HIV can lead to AIDS, which occurs when the immune system is so weak it becomes susceptible to serious infections and some cancers.
Theres an epidemic of HIV in the United States and around the world. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , more than 1.1 million people in the United States are living with HIV, and 1 in 7 of them arent aware of it. An estimated 39,782 people in the country were diagnosed with HIV in 2016 alone.
HIV transmission occurs in many different ways, including through condomless sex and by sharing needles. Risk of transmission varies depending on several factors including:
- sexual practices and the HIV status of sexual partners
- sharing needles for drug use or tattoos
- use of PrEP, PEP, condoms, or having an undetectable viral load
Its important to understand the risk level based on actual factors in preventing the transmission of HIV.
Sugar Daddy Culture And Transactional Sex
Age-disparate sexual relationships between young women and older men are common in many parts of the world, with particularly high levels in both east and southern Africa and west and central Africa. In many instances, these relationships are transactional in nature, in that they are non-commercial, non-marital sexual relationships motivated by the implicit assumption that sex will be exchanged for material support or other benefits. This assumption arises from harmful gendered expectations of intimate relationships namely, that men are responsible for providing material resources and women are responsible for providing sexual and domestic services. Many of these relationships include shared emotional intimacy, with people referring to themselves as boyfriends, girlfriends or lovers.58
Research indicates that in sub-Saharan Africa, transactional sex is one of the key factors in womens heightened vulnerability to HIV and other STIs. Growing evidence suggests transactional relationships are likely to involve high-risk sex and low condom use.59
Age-gaps and HIV risk
In the first study to demonstrate a link between the size of the age-gap in age-disparate relationships and HIV, researchers working in Zimbabwe found that when a young woman is in a relationship with a man who is older than herself, she is more at risk of acquiring HIV if the age-gap is 10 years or more.
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