I started Descovy for PreP on December 10th, 2024 after a negative HIV test.  I take it daily.  I took another test on February 11th, 2025 to renew my prescription and have continued uninterrupted.  I have unprotected oral sex encounters where I perform the oral.  On February 28th, I started to feel sick and went to the doctor where I tested negative for strep, flu, and covid.  They started me on Augmentin for 10 days.  On March 2nd I took an oraquick test (Negative) which is 3 weeks after my last 4th gen test to renew PreP.  I have a low-grade fever, chills, sore throat, mouth ulcers, cough, chest congestion, some night sweating, and a few sores on my face that started when I started the antibiotic.  Still not feeling well.  I know the 1 in 10,000 risk for oral sex makes it unlikely and I think PreP makes it even further unlikely that I acquired HIV.  Should I continue to test for HIV for this bout of sickness?  Would this make you concerned?

Also....since I started feeling sick, I've had no appetite and have to make myself eat something each day.  My tonsils are still red and inflamed as well.

Welcome to our forum. Thank you for your questions. Congratulations as well on your approach to save sex, including the use of PrEP.  Being on prep reduces risk for acquisition of HIV through any sort of exposure, including receipt of oral sex. Thus you can anticipate that you were use of prep would reduce your risk of acquiring HIV from performing unprotected oral sex on an infected partner by nearly 100 full i.e. to a rate of close to One in 1 million.---

Thank you Doctor.   For me, the most alarming thing was the lower face sores (5-6 that looked like large acne but no whiteheads and one that was just an open sore) and the mouth ulcers (6-7) all of which formed 1-2 days after feeling sick.  These are all on the way to being healed after a week of being sick.  Now I still have a cough, chest congestion, and some chills and sweating at night.  Along with that are hours of searching the internet all night looking for anything including pictures of sores.

Thanks for the additional information.  My assessment is unchanged.  Chest congestion and productive cough and not typical symptoms of recently acquired HIV.  Nor are sores within your mouth.  Herpes, most commonly due to HSV-1 unless you already have it (cold sores would be the most common manifestation of HSV-1) or, very rarely HSV-2 (for reasons that are unclear, HSV-2 does not "like" to infect the mouth and face) might be a possibility unless you already have it.  If this is HSV a PCR swab test for herpes would provide the most accurate diagnosis (blood tests for HSV are notoriously unreliable)  EWH---

Thank you sir.

As you know, we provide up to 3 responses to each client's questions.  This will therefore be my final response, following which the thread will be closed. ---