Hello Doctors,This is the second time I am asking a question in this forum.Will try to give as much details as possible and please tell me if my scare is real or not and if this is something that I might need to investigate further.As mentioned and in my earlier question when I was single I used to visit escorts maybe once a month.Most of them were at the high price spectrum which at least in my mind me made them feel safer.On February 2022 I did a blood test and showed my lympho a bit low and my mono a bit high.At the time I did not thought anything about it because my doctor mentioned those values are non specific and to not pay attention to it so I totally forgot about it.On May i entered a relationship with a girl with whom after a couple of months started to have unprotected sex with.On November 2022 she went for a regular check up and her blood result also showed high mono low lympho ratio which reminded me of my blood test a couple of months ago and thought it was a big coincidence so i started to google it and I happened to come across HIV as a cause for this mono lympho ratio and from the time I couldnt get it off my mind.I was thinking that I might have been HIV positive without knowing and also infected my girlfriend hence the similarity in the results.Last time when i asked the question here i mentioned to Dr Hook that i will get tested and I did. I ordered an INSTI hiv home test and did the test which only showed one dot but very faintly... you could only see the dot under the light. Googled it and found many people saying that a faint dot still indicates a negative result. But my question is... what if the second dot was even fainter than the first one and wasnt able to see it and my test was positive and not negative??Also the last month I am experiencing chronic headache almost every day and found on the web that HIV during incubation period causes that.

As Dr. Hook said, it is pointless to look at blood counts and monocyte and lymphocyte numbers and ratios. There are completely meaningless in judging whether or not someone might have HIV. The only way to do that is to have an HIV test, and you did that. I cannot comment on how your describe your home HIV test result; you were there and I was not. I have no personal knowledge about interpretation of a faint dot with the INSTI test. However, as also discussed with Dr. Hook, you are at low risk for HIV and it seems very unlikely you are infected. And it is wrong that "chronic headache" is a symptom that suggest HIV. And anyway, just as with blood count results, symptoms almost never are helpful indicators of possible HIV infection.

My advice is that you have a lab-based antigen-antibody blood test -- i.e. AgAb (also called 4th generation). You can expect a negative results. I will be happy to comment further if you do that and would like to let me know your result. But there's really nothing more I can do until and unless you have such a test. In the meantime, do your best to stop worrying. There is nothing in your story that suggests you have HIV.

I hope these comments are helpful. Let me know if anything isn't clear.

HHH, MD

Thank you for taking the time to get back to me.

Just wanted to put my mind at ease until I take the test nothing more.

I will test regardless but I wanted to ask that from your perspective is there any actual risk here? I mean all my encounters were protected and based on what I am reading in those forums this is zero risk, but mine is described as low risk.

Do you recommend the testing just for the peace of mind or because from a doctors perspective you believe there is a need for it ?

This is all I need clarification with, after that I ll just go do my test and move on with my life.

I want to say that I went and got tested today and my result is negative :) Thanks for everything