People Think Its Easy To Contract Hiv Thats A Good Thing Right Maybe Not Guest Post By Jason Kerwin
This is the fourteenth in our series of posts by students on the job market this year.People are afraid of HIV. Moreover, people around the world are convinced that the virus is easier to get than it actually is. The median person thinks that if you have unprotected sex with an HIV-positive person a single time, you will get HIV for sure. The truth is that its not nearly that easy to get HIV the medical literature estimates that the transmission rate is actually about 0.1% per sex act, or 10% per year.
Great stuff! I’ve wanted to see precisely this paper for a while. I think it’s morally opprobrious that we exaggerate the risks to people, and it’s very interesting to also see that this backfires through the previously only theorized fatalism channel.
I was 12 when magic Johnson came out that he wasHIV positive. I am now 37 and sex still scares me and I can honestly say I barely get any enjoyment out of it. This was helpful I’ll relax a little bit more
my partner of six years is HIV positive,this has affected our sexual relationship and we do not have any child yet,because of his condition.he has been on hiv drug all this while and the VL shows 0.1%,can we make love without me contacting the virus?
To Prevent Hiv Infection Couples Try Testing Together
In other words, particular versions of the virus, with particular DNA sequences, are most likely to pass from a woman to a man. This reduces the chance an infection occurs during sex.
The restriction is less when women have sex with an HIV-positive man. And, most likely, reduced even further when men have sex with men. So the chance of an infection increases in both situations.
As HIV replicates inside a person, mutations are introduced into its DNA. This results in a large number of different HIV versions swarming about the body each with its own genetic code.
But when HIV is transmitted through sex, usually only a single version of the virus establishes a long-term infection. So the process is almost like a filter, letting only certain viruses through.
This made scientists wonder: Is there something special about the HIV versions making it through the filter?
To figure this out, a team at Microsoft Research and Emory University analyzed data from a decades-long study on HIV transmission between “discordant” heterosexual couples in Zambia. These are couples in which one person is HIV-positive and the other is HIV-negative.
How Can To Help Stop The Spread Of Hiv
To lower the risk of getting HIV and other STIs:
- Those who are HIV-negative should consider PrEP. If a possible HIV exposure occurs, PEP may provide emergency protection.
- Use condoms during vaginal and anal sex.
- Get tested and treated for STIs and follow healthcare providers recommended screening schedule.
- Before having sex with someone, ask them to get tested for HIV and STIs.
- Those who inject drugs should get clean needles from a needle exchange.
- Avoid sharing needles for drugs and tattoos.
Talk to a healthcare provider about PrEP if a sexual partner has HIV with a detectable viral load or theres another known risk of contracting the virus. Heres a search tool for finding healthcare providers who prescribe PrEP.
Anyone who thinks they might have contracted HIV needs to get tested immediately. Early treatment can help manage the symptoms, lower the risk of complications, lower the risk of transmitting HIV to a sexual partner, and help people to live a long and healthy life.
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No 6 Having Oral Sex: Negligible
The odds of contracting HIV during oral sex are slim to none. Thats because the virus isnt transmitted through saliva, tears, or sweat unless its also mixed with blood. If an HIV-positive man ejaculates in his partners mouth, however and, for example, the partner has an open sore or bleeding gums experts say that it might theoretically be possible to pass along the virus.
- Reduce the risk. Using a condom or dental dam can help lower the risk of transmitting not only HIV but other STDs, including syphilis, herpes, gonorrhea, and chlamydia. People can also reduce their risk by having their HIV-positive partner ejaculate into a condom or by removing their mouth from the penis before ejaculation.
How To Prevent The Spread Of Hiv
People living with HIV can use the following to prevent transmitting it to others:
- Pre-exposure prophylaxis : This is a daily pill that contains two antivirals called tenofovir and emtricitabine. When a person takes it daily, PrEP can reduce the risk of acquiring HIV through sex by
- of a recent potential HIV exposure.
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What Is The Risk Of Hiv From Anal Sex
The risk of HIV through unprotected anal intercourse is seen to be extremely high, as much 18 times greater than vaginal intercourse. The reasons for the increased risk are well known and include such factors as:
- The fragility of rectal tissues, which allow the virus direct access into the bloodstream through tiny tears or abrasions
- The porousness of rectal tissues, providing access even when undamaged
- The high concentration of HIV in semen and pre-seminal fluid , which doubles the risk of infection with every one-log rise in the person’s viral load.
Furthermore, the secretion of blood from damaged rectal tissues can increase the risk for the insertive partner, providing the virus a route of transmission through the urethra and tissues that line the head of the penis .
How Do You Get Or Transmit Hiv
You can only get HIV by coming into direct contact with certain body fluids from a person with HIV who has a detectable viral load. These fluids are:
- Blood
- Semen and pre-seminal fluid
- Rectal fluids
- Vaginal fluids
- Breast milk
For transmission to occur, the HIV in these fluids must get into the bloodstream of an HIV-negative person through a mucous membrane open cuts or sores or by direct injection.
People 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.
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Can You Get Hiv From A Blood Transfusion
Receiving a blood transfusion or other products made from blood is safe in the UK as all blood products have been screened for infections such as HIV since 1985.
In countries that dont have strict checks on the safety of their blood supply, receiving contaminated blood can pass the virus on. This can also happen in countries that dont screen other blood products, organs or sperm.
Giving blood has never been a risk.
For Latex Male Condoms:
- Put on the condom after the penis is hard. If the penis is not circumcised, pull back the foreskin before putting on the condom.
- Pinch the tip of the condom to leave a little space at the top to catch semen. Unroll the condom all the way down the penis. Add a little bit of water-based lubricant to the outside of the condom.
- After ejaculation, hold the rim of the condom and pull out the penis while it is still hard, so that no semen spills out.
- Use a new condom every time you have vaginal, anal or oral sex.
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Risk By Sexual Activity
When discussing HIV risk, people often try to ascertain which “type” of sex is riskier vaginal, anal, or oral. From a purely statistical standpoint, anal sex is considered the highest risk activity with an almost 18-fold greater risk of infection compared to vaginal sex.
But this assessment is somewhat misleading, at least from an individual perspective. While vaginal sex may pose a lower risk comparatively, the figures neither take into account the way in which the disease is distributed between men and women nor the vulnerabilities which place some individuals at extremely high risk of infection.
Women are three to four times more likely to get HIV from men than the other way around. A young woman is more likely to get HIV from her first sexual encounter than her male partner.
There are some men who are far more likely to get HIV than others. Studies have shown, for example, that uncircumcised men are more than twice as likely to get HIV after vaginal sex than circumcised men.
Vulnerabilities vary by individual, so assessing the real risk of vaginal sex requires a better understanding of the factors that place some women and men at greater risk than others.
Can You Get Hiv From Having Sex With Someone Who Has Aids
If you have sex with someone who has AIDS, not HIV, can you still get HIV? Sarah*
Yes. People who have AIDS are infected with the HIV virus. This means they can pass HIV on to others.
AIDS happens after someone has had HIV for many years. In AIDS, the immune system is severely weakened. When someone gets HIV, that person can spread the infection to other people immediately. And if HIV develops into AIDS, the virus can spread to others.
HIV/AIDS spreads when infected blood or body fluids enter the body. This can happen:
- during sex
- through sharing needles for injecting drugs or tattooing
HIV/AIDS also can pass from mother to child during pregnancy, childbirth, or breastfeeding.
To reduce your risk of getting HIV/AIDS if you are sexually active:
- Use a condom every time you have sex .
- Get tested for HIV and make sure all partners do too.
- Have fewer sexual partners.
- Get tested and treated for STDs having an STD increases the risk of HIV infection.
- Consider taking a medicine every day if you are at very high risk of getting infected .
It’s also important to:
- not inject drugs or share any kind of needle
- not share razors or other personal objects that may touch blood
- not touch anyone else’s blood from a cut or sore
*Names have been changed to protect user privacy.
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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.
How Hiv Is Transmitted
HIV is not passed on easily from one person to another. The virus does not spread through the air like cold and flu viruses.
HIV lives in the blood and in some body fluids. To get HIV, 1 of these fluids from someone with HIV has to get into your blood.
The body fluids that contain enough HIV to infect someone are:
- semen
- vaginal fluids, including menstrual blood
- breast milk
- contact with animals or insects like mosquitoes
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Challenges In Calculating A Number
It isn’t easy for researchers to calculate the risk of transmission from an exposure to HIV through sex. To do this effectively, a group of HIV-negative individuals need to be followed over time and their exposures to HIVboth the number of times they are exposed and the types of exposureneed to be tracked.
As you can imagine, accurately tracking the number of times a person is exposed to HIV is very difficult. Researchers ask HIV-negative individuals enrolled in these studies to report how many times they have had sex in a given period of time, what type of sex they had, how often they used condoms and the HIV status of their partner. Because a person may have trouble remembering their sexual behaviour or may not want to tell the whole truth, this reporting is often inaccurate.
Furthermore, a person does not always know the HIV status of their partner. For this reason, researchers usually enroll HIV-negative individuals who are in stable relationships with an HIV-positive partner . Researchers can then conclude that any unprotected sex reported by a study participant counts as an exposure to HIV.
Does Spermicide Provide Additional Protection Against Hiv
You should not use additional or separate applications of spermicide for HIV prevention during vaginal or anal sex. Women who use spermicidal cream or jelly for pregnancy prevention should also use a condom to protect against HIV and to provide better protection against pregnancy than spermicide alone.
Spermicides contain the chemical nonoxynol-9 . Although N-9 kills HIV in test tubes, one study showed that N-9 inserted into the vagina may irritate the vagina and actually increase the risk of HIV infection during vaginal sex. N-9 may also irritate the lining of the rectum and should not be used for anal sex.
Some condoms are pre-lubricated with a lubricant containing N-9. These condoms still provide greater protection against HIV than not using a condom. However, a lubricated condom without N-9 may be the best for HIV prevention.
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How Can A Woman Reduce Her Chances Of Contracting Hiv
HIV is transmitted through bodily fluids like blood and semen. Using injection drugs, having unprotected sex and having multiple sex partners increases the chances of acquiring HIV. The only way to be absolutely certain you do not become infected with HIV is to not have sex and not use injection drugs. You also can avoid infection by only having one sex partner as long as your partner does not have HIV and has sex only with you. According to the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention , using a male or female condom every time you have vaginal or anal sex can greatly lower your risk of infection. Using condoms for oral sex will reduce your risk for other STDs as well. It also is important not to douche, since douching removes some of the normal vaginal bacteria that can protect you from infection.
How Hard Is It To Contract Hiv From
Many people have questions about scenarios they have heard could lead to HIV transmission. For example, a lot of people are told at some point that you can get HIV from using a toilet seat. In reality, the likelihood of that happening is so minuscule, it isnt worth considering. For HIV to be transmitted in that manner, two people who both had open wounds that made contact with the toilet seat would have to use the same seat seconds after each other. Even then, the chances of infection would still be small. A slightly more realistic way that people worry about contracting HIV is through kissing. However, its still only a tiny bit more realistic. A person would again have to have open sores in their mouth, and it would take a lot of saliva to transmit the virus.
Most people are unlikely to have to worry about how hard is it to contract HIV during their day-to-day lives. You wont accidentally contract it from sharing a glass with someone. You wont get it from touching someone in a non-sexual manner, unless you both have open wounds. Before believing anything you hear about how hard is it to contract HIV, its always best to research. You can quickly dispel some common myths by Googling them.
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How Hard Is It To Contract Hiv
by LukePublished on December 9, 2016Updated on March 5, 2019
If youre wondering how hard is it to contract HIV, chances are its because of the many misconceptions surrounding HIV. There are lots of myths people fall for, which can be difficult to dispel. Many people dont learn about HIV and AIDS in school. Even those who do learn about it often forget what theyve learned or arent taught much. One of the things many people have misunderstandings about is how HIV is transmitted. Many people believe that it can be transmitted through kissing or touching. Understanding HIV and AIDS and how hard is it to contract HIV is important for a number of reasons. Its essential for people to look after their own sexual health as well as reduce the stigma surrounding how to contract HIV.
Exploring Hiv Transmission Rates
World Health Organization , about 36.7 million people worldwide lived with HIV as of 2016. Still, thanks to antiretroviral therapy , people with HIV are leading longer, better quality lives. Many of these strides have been made in the United States.
To help reduce the risk of transmission, its important to understand how the virus is spread. HIV is only transmitted through bodily fluids, such as:
- blood
- semen
- breast milk
Learn which type of exposure is most likely to transmit the virus and how antiretroviral drugs are making a difference.
, direct blood transfusion is the route of exposure that poses the highest risk of transmission. While uncommon, receiving a blood transfusion from a donor with HIV may increase the risk.
The CDC also discusses HIV transmission risk in terms of how many times the virus is likely to be transmitted per 10,000 exposures. For example, for every 10,000 blood transfusions from a donor with HIV, the virus is likely to be transmitted 9,250 times.
Since 1985, however, blood banks have adopted stricter screening measures to identify blood with HIV. Now all blood donations are carefully tested for HIV. If they test positive, theyre discarded. As a result, the risk of contracting HIV from a blood transfusion is very low.
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