[Question #7014] Touching Blood, HIV risk.

12 months ago

I am a female. I had protected vaginal and anal sex with a man 2 weeks ago. I was confident with my encounter because as far as I know the condom was used correctly.

However, this Monday I cut myself with a piece of glass while washing the dishes, it was not a big wound but it bled for a couple of minutes, a friend of mine was there when it happened, and he helped me to wash and put a bandit in the wound, he touched my fresh blood and then he washed his hands. I am not sure if he had any cuts in his hands.

Unfortunately the blood triggered my imagination and made me hesitate about the safety of my last encounter and my HIV status and now I am worried because my friend touched my blood.

Assuming I have HIV or Hep C. Is my friend in a risk because he touched my blood?

Do I need a test?

As general information, if I had had unprotected vaginal and anal sex. What will be my chance in numbers to get HIV?

H. Hunter Handsfield, MD

12 months ago

Wekcome back to the forum. Thank you for your continued confidence in our services.

Nobody ever has been known to cathc HIV because of a cut or other injury, except for health care providers injured while caring for HIV infected patients. Evem if you have HIV or hepatitis C (which is very unlikely), your friend is not at risk from being in contact with your blood. You do not need testing on account of this event and neither does your friend.

It is not possible to answer your question about your risk of HIV from unprotected vaginal or anal sex. It depends entirely on the chance your parnter(s) were infected, the details of the sexual contacts (e.g., with or wihout condom), and how often such contacts occur. In your previous discussion wtih Dr. Hook, you described infrequent sex with new partners, so probably you are at very low risk of catching HIV.

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

HHH, MD

---

12 months ago

Thanks for your answer.

About the last question, I think I was looking for an statistically approach of the risk of unprotected vaginal and anal sex if the partner has HIV. Pretty much I had in mind the comments that Dr Hook kindly mentioned me in my last interaction.

"If you had performed unprotected sex on him, or if the condom had broken, the exposure is still very, very low risk. If he had HIV, which is statistically unlikely, your risk for infection from performing unprotected fellatio would be less than 1 infection per more than 10,000 sex acts (i.e. less than 1/100th of 1%)."

In another post I saw for unprotected vaginal sex if the partner has HIV the chance for encounter is 1 to 1000.

But for Anal I could not find something similar.

I hope I was able to express myself and have your aditional comments.

I appreciate your time.

H. Hunter Handsfield, MD

12 months ago

If a male has HIV and is not taking anti-HIV treatment, the average risk of catching HIV for his female partner is roughly once for every 1,000 episodes of unprotected vaginal sex. It's quite a bit higher for unprotected anal, around 1 in 75. However, that figure is for men having sex with other men; it may be lower for heterosexual anal sex.

And of course these are figurres only if the male partner is infected and untreated. In the US, HIV is present in fewer than 1 in a thousand straight men who are not injection drug users or otherwise at high risk. For absolute assurance, both you and your partner can be tested. If both negative, you can be sure you are not at risk.

---

11 months ago

The information provided was helpful to my concerns. This has been my only sex event in the year. I will take a test but just as part of the annual check up.

Just to be clear according with other answers in the board , a 4 generation test , 6 weeks or more is 100 % conclusive no matter how high the last risk was?

Thanks again for your time.

H. Hunter Handsfield, MD

11 months ago

Yes. An AgAb (4th generation) test is absolutely conclusive at 6 or more weeks after exposure, regardless of the risk level of htat exposure.

That completes the two follow-up exchanges included with each question and so ends this thread. I hope the discussion has been helpful. Best wishes and stay safe.

---