Is It Easy To Catch Hiv

No 2 Having Anal Sex : 1 In 72

The receptive partner is 13 times more likely to be infected with HIV than the insertive partner, according to the CDC. Thats because the virus found in blood, semen, preseminal fluid , and rectal fluids can more easily enter the receptive persons body through the thin lining of the rectum.

• Reduce the risk. If the insertive partner has HIV, using a condom during receptive anal sex can help reduce the risk of transmission by an average of 72 percent, according to the CDC. Water- or silicone-based lubricants can help lessen the chance that the condom will break.

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.

What Is The Risk If The Hiv Positive Person Is On Treatment

HIV treatment dramatically reduces the risk of HIV transmission.

If the HIV positive person has an undetectable viral load on treatment this becomes zero.

The reported ZERO HIV transmission after more than 58,000 times when HIV positive people with undetectable viral load had sex WITHOUT using condoms. The reported ZERO transmission in gay couples after approximately 77,000 times that gay couple had sex without condoms.

You May Like: How Long Can Aids Go Undetected

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.

Ways Hiv Can Be Transmitted

How is HIV passed from one person to another?

Most people who get HIV get it through anal or vaginal sex, or sharing needles, syringes, or other drug injection equipment . But there are powerful tools that can help prevent HIV transmission.

Can I get HIV from anal sex?

You can get HIV if you have anal sex with someone who has HIV without using protection .

• Anal sex is the riskiest type of sex for getting or transmitting HIV.
• Being the receptive partner is riskier for getting HIV than being the insertive partner .
• The bottoms risk of getting HIV is very high because the rectums lining is thin and may allow HIV to enter the body during anal sex.
• The top is also at risk because HIV can enter the body through the opening at the tip of the penis , the foreskin if the penis isnt circumcised, or small cuts, scratches, or open sores anywhere on the penis.

Can I get HIV from vaginal sex?

You can get HIV if you have vaginal sex with someone who has HIV without using protection .

Can HIV be transmitted from a mother to her baby?

HIV can be transmitted from a mother to her baby during pregnancy, birth, or breastfeeding. However, it is less common because of advances in HIV prevention and treatment.

Can I get HIV from sharing needles, syringes, or other drug injection equipment?

You are at high risk for getting HIV if you with someone who has HIV. Never share needles or other equipment to inject drugs, hormones, steroids, or silicone.

Recommended Reading: Does Cookie Johnson Have Hiv

Multiple Vulnerabilities Increase Risk In Men And Women

• Accidental Exposure Risk

Vaginal sex is one of the primary ways a person can become infected with HIV. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, it accounts for about 6,300 new infections among women each year in the U.S. and about 2,800 new infections among heterosexual men.

Globally, the figures are even more dismaying. While the sexual transmission of HIV in the U.S. is highest among gay and bisexual men , heterosexuals are by far the group most affected worldwide.

This is especially true in Africa where most new infections are among heterosexuals. In these populations, vaginal sex is the predominant route of infection.

Contaminated Blood Transfusions And Organ/tissue Transplants

• receiving blood transfusions, blood products, or organ/tissue transplants that are contaminated with HIV. This risk is extremely small because most countries test blood products for HIV first.

If adequate safety practices are not in place, healthcare workers can also be at risk of HIV from cuts made by a needle or sharp object with infected blood on it. However, the risk of occupational exposure, is very low in most countries.

If you think you have been exposed to HIV, the only way to find out if you have HIV is to have an HIV test.

Don’t Miss: Does Cookie Johnson Have Aids

Oral Sex And Hiv Acquisition

Oral sex is not likely to transmit HIV under most circumstances. Many large studies have shown that a person living with HIV who takes HIV drugs and has an undetectable viral loadcannot transmit the virus to their sexual partners. This includes any kind of sex, including oral sex and sex without using condoms or barriers. This reality is known in the HIV community as Undetectable Equals Untransmittable, or U=U.

When a person living with HIV is not on treatment, oral sex is still a low-risk activity for HIV. If a person is not taking HIV drugs and/or has a detectable viral load, that low chance of transmission is greater if one of the partners has bleeding gums, mouth ulcers, gum disease, genital sores, and other sexually transmitted infections or diseases .

A number of studies have tried to figure out the exact level of HIV transmission risk that oral sex poses, but this is not easy to do. When HIV is transmitted, it is difficult to tell if oral sex or another activity that poses more risk was responsible.

The chances of HIV being passed from one person to another depend on the type of contact. HIV is most easily spread or transmitted through unprotected anal sex, unprotected vaginal sex, and sharing injection drug equipment that has not been cleaned. Unprotected sex means sex in which no condoms, other barriers, or HIV treatment-as-prevention methods are used.

For HIV transmission to be possible:

Dont Miss: How Do You Feel With Hiv

How Hiv Is Contracted

To contract HIV, bodily fluids, such as blood, breast milk and sexual excretions, must be exchanged. However, it cannot be contracted through sweat or urine. The chances of infection through saliva are very low. The most common way HIV is contracted is through sexual intercourse without a condom. Other ways include transmission from mother to child through breastfeeding or during pregnancy. It can also be transmitted through sharing needles or other drug paraphernalia. There is more than one type of HIV, so its important for even HIV positive people to remember that they have a risk of reinfection. However, its also important to remember that the virus is not very stable. It cannot survive long outside of the body only a few seconds, in fact.

Recommended Reading: Can You Get Aids From Dried Blood

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.

What Puts You At Risk For Stds And Hiv

You’re at risk if you:

• Have sex without using a condom, with someone who is infected.
• Have had an STD.
• Have more than one sex partner.
• Are under the influence of drugs and alcohol.

• Many women have STDs without having symptoms. This means that unless she gets tested, she may have an STD and not know it.
• Young women are getting HIV or an STD because the tissue lining the vagina is more fragile.

If you are a woman, take charge of your sexual health. Be sure to schedule pelvic exams and pap smears every year. Get tested and learn how to protect yourself from STDs and HIV.

Recommended Reading: How Long Can Hiv Lay Dormant

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.

Sharing Injection Drug Equipment

Sharing needles for injecting drugs most efficiently transmits HIV. This is because used needles and syringes can still contain blood, which can carry the virus.

An older study found that HIV can survive up to 42 days in syringes, depending on the temperature.

HIV isnt the only virus that can be transmitted by sharing injection drug equipment. The viruses that cause hepatitis B and hepatitis C can be transmitted in this way as well.

There are also some less common ways that HIV can be transmitted. Lets take a look at some of them below.

Don’t Miss: How Long Can Hiv Go Undetected

What Are My Chances Of Contracting Hiv

We include products we think are useful for our readers. If you buy through links on this page, we may earn a small commission. Heres our process.

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.

Can You Get Hiv Through Oral Sex

The risk of HIV from oral sex is very small unless you or your partner have large open sores on the genital area or bleeding gums/sores in your mouth.

There is only a slightly increased risk if a woman being given oral sex is HIV-positive and is menstruating. However, you can always use a dental dam to eliminate these risks.

Recommended Reading: Hiv 1 2 Antibodies

How Can You Reduce Your Risk Of Contracting Hiv

Ultimately, you shouldnt try to gauge your own risk of contracting HIV. The best thing to do is to assume that you always have a chance of contracting it when engaging in risky behavior. When it comes to sex, the best way to prevent HIV infection is to always use a condom. Not only should you use them every time, but you should use them properly, too. This may seem simple, but there are some important rules to follow. For example, no one should use a condom that has been in their wallet for the last year. Its important to use condoms as instructed and handle them with care. Taking one out of its packet with long fingernails isnt a good idea. You might also choose to use internal condoms, dental dams or gloves for protection.

There are other risks to manage, aside from having sex. Anyone who injects drugs should be sure to use clean equipment and never share with anyone else. Seeking out needle programs and other services makes this easier to do. Although it is an unlikely method of transmission, people in health care professions should be careful. They should ensure they have adequate training and knowledge. Health and safety in the workplace should involve methods for managing sharps and fluids.

Does This Symptom Related To Hiv

Most people worried about a recent infection mistake common symptoms of other illnesses with HIV. Stress and worry can cause and contribute to these symptoms. Information about .

If you have any symptoms that are worrying you, then seek medical advice from a doctor or other health care worker. The people working at i-Base are not doctors. We cannot diagnose HIV or any other illness.

Also Check: Can You Get Hiv From Dried Blood

What To Do If You’re Not Sure

HIV hotlines are used to getting calls from people who are afraid they have been infected through casual contact. Perhaps the person was involved in a fight or came into contact with someone who was bleeding. Others may worry about having deep kissed someone who may or may not have HIV.

While the likelihood of infection in these cases would be considered negligible to nil, people will often want a 100% guarantee that they’re going to be fine nothing less will suffice.

In such cases, doctors will usually take the opportunity to perform an HIV test and perform pre- and post-test counseling to better understand what the person knows about HIV and answer any questions they might have.

If there is a risk of actual transmission, however small, the doctor may opt to prescribe a 28-day course of HIV medications known as post-exposure prophylaxis which may avert infection if treatment is started within 72 hours of the suspected exposure.

In cases where the person’s fears seem extreme and unreasonable, counseling may also be needed to address the possibility of AIDS phobia or other possible anxiety disorders.

How Are Hiv And Aids Treated

Medicines can help people with HIV stay healthy. They can also prevent HIV from becoming AIDS. People with HIV and AIDS usually need to take a few different medicines. The medicines must be taken exactly as prescribed or they wont work.

These medicines:

• help keep the number of CD4 cells high
• lower the viral load of HIV

Regular blood tests will check to see how well the medicines are working.

Also Check: Does Walgreens Do Hiv Testing

Ways Hiv Cannot Be Spread

HIV is not spread by:

• Air or water
• Mosquitoes, ticks or other insects
• Saliva, tears, or sweat that is not mixed with the blood of a person with HIV
• Shaking hands hugging sharing toilets sharing dishes, silverware, or drinking glasses or engaging in closed-mouth or social kissing with a person with HIV
• Drinking fountains

Isnt Hiv Only A Risk For Certain Groups Of People

Like most illnesses, HIV doesnt discriminate between types of people and the infection can be passed on to anyone via one of the ways mentioned above.

Some people are more vulnerable to HIV infection if they engage regularly in certain activities that are more likely to transmit the virus. However, its a common misunderstanding that HIV only affects certain groups.

While not everyone has the same level of HIV risk, everyone can reduce their risk of infection.

Also Check: Can You Get Hiv From Dried Blood