[Question #11171] Unprotected oral

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16 months ago
Evening dr,
2 weeks ago (thursday) i had unprotective oral with csw. I feel she did it a little bit rough as it contacted with ber teeth. In the end i saw i had a sore on my penis due to the oral. 2 weeks after (now), i got a heavy flu symptoms such as sore throat and cold. I know it might be due to the stres of overthink and having a little bit of sleep at night. But i wonder : what is the chance of getting hiv from unprotected insertive oral in my case? (Sore/cut on penis due to her teeth). The problem is i dont know if she had ulcers or cut on her gum/mouth area
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H. Hunter Handsfield, MD
16 months ago
Welcome back to the forum. Thank you for your continuing confidence in our services.

Looking back at your previous question and Dr. Hook's replies a few months ago, there are similarities to this event. There has never been a scientifically proved case of HIV transmitted by oral sex, i.e. oral to penis by fellatio. That doesn't mean the risk is zero, but obviously it is exceedingly low. (An estimate by CDC a few years ago, based on how people with HIV thought they were infected -- which often is wrong -- was that if the oral partner is infected, the odds the penile partner will catch HIV is one in 20,000. That's equivalent to receiving BJs by HIV infected partners once daily for 55 years before infection might be likely.) Could a tooth injury raise the risk? Possibly. But if you think about it, in the four decades of the world wide HIV/AIDS epidemic there must have been millions if not billions of episodes of fellatio that involved penile injury -- and still there are no proved cases of HIV transmission. Whether or not your partner had ulcers in her mouth, gum disease, etc probably also makes no difference one way or the other.

Therefore, you can be confident you don't have hIV. And your symptoms don't really fit with acute HIV infection either. The "flu symptoms" that can result mean fever, headache, and body aches. But not cold symptoms. Acute HIV infection does not cause typical cold symptoms like nasal congestion or cough. And two weeks also is a bit long:  HIV symptoms typically start within 8-10 days. Almost certainly you caught a cold, nothing more -- or conceivably influenza or covid -- but not HIV.

I don't advise testing; and if you have a regular partner, you can safely continue your usual sexual practices without worrying about transmitting HIV.

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

HHH, MD
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