Can Hiv Be Transmitted Through Kissing An Infected Person

How Long Can Hiv Survive Outside The Human Body

Generally the fragile nature of the virus prevents it from surviving for a substantial amount of time in the open air. The length of time HIV can survive outside the body is dependent on the amount of HIV present in the body fluid and the conditions the fluid is subjected to.

Note that HIV is fragile and many common substances such as hot liquid, soap, bleach, alcohol, and the gastric juices found within your stomach can destroy the virus.

Your skin is a 100% proof barrier against HIV. The virus cannot enter your skin unless there is an open bleeding wound. If you get blood on your skin, simply wash with water and soap. There is no need to scrub because this might damage the skin.

It is good practice to be careful with any blood spill, because one can never tell if the person it came from has HIV or other blood borne infections. You can safely clean such blood spills with water and Clorox.

Is There A Way To Prevent Stds From Kissing

Abstinence is the only way to completely prevent oral STDs. But kissing is enjoyable, and may even have some health benefits.

If you like kissing, here are some strategies for lowering your chances of getting an oral STD:

• Avoid kissing if you or your partner have any sores or cuts in the mouth.

• Dont bite while kissing.

• Dont brush or floss right before/after kissing.

• Practice good, regular dental hygiene.

• Avoid kissing if you feel sick.

• If you enjoy using your mouth for other sexual activities, like oral sex, use a barrier like a dental dam or condom.

• Get vaccinated against HPV and hepatitis B.

How Is Hiv Not Spread

HIV is not spread by:

• Mosquitoes, ticks, or other insects
• Saliva, tears, sweat, feces, or urine 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
• Other sexual activities that dont involve the exchange of body fluids .

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Is It True That Gay Men Are More At Risk For Hiv Than Other People

Although anyone can be at risk for HIV, some people can be more at risk depending upon the types of sexual practices and drug use they are engaging in. Being gay does not necessarily mean you are at higher risk, but certain activities gay men sometimes participate in might put them at greater risk. Overall, the gay male population in Canada has higher rates of HIV infection than some other populations. Stigma and homophobia can affect a person’s ability to access information about safer sex specifically for gay men.

Myth : Theres A Cure For Hiv

While antiretroviral therapy can substantially reduce the amount of HIV in a persons blood, its not a cure. If an HIV-positive person suddenly stops taking their meds, the amount of virus in their blood can skyrocket.

Even skipping doses of the meds can allow HIV to change form and potentially become resistant to the drugs, according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

The key to living well with HIV and avoiding transmission to others is to get treatment as early as possible and take those meds daily as prescribed.

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Tips To Avoid Hiv Transmission

To prevent the spread of HIV, follow these guidelines:

• Use condoms during sexual intercourse
• Never share needles and syringes
• Avoid multiple sexual partners
• Use lubricant during sexual intercourse to reduce friction and dryness which can cause vaginal tears and broken condoms.
• Speak to your doctor about PrEP , if you believe you are at high risk of exposure. PrEP is a daily medication used to help prevent HIV.
• Speak to your doctor about taking post-exposure prophylaxis if you think you’ve just been exposed to the virus. PEP is a type of antiretroviral medication that help prevent HIV if started within 72 hours after you might have been exposed to the virus.

How Viral Load Affects Transmission

For people who have HIV, your viral load is the amount of the virus that can be found in your blood.

“Once a virus enters your body, it uses your cells to reproduce. When it reproduces you get a high amount of the virus in your body. The viral load is how you describe the amount of virus you have in your body. The higher your viral load is, the more infectious you are,” Safo says.

Your viral load is at its highest at the beginning and end-stage of the virus. During these times, you are highly infectious and can easily transmit the virus to another person.

HIV medication is designed to lower your viral load to levels by which it becomes difficult to transmit. In some cases, your load might become so low while on medication that a test won’t be able to detect the virus.

If your viral load is undetectable then you can’t transmit the virus to another person. However, not everyone on HIV medication can achieve or maintain undetectable viral loads, which is why it’s advisable to continue to practice safe sex.

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How Hiv Is Spread

The virus can also be spread through sharing needles, and it can be passed from an infected pregnant woman to her unborn baby.

But steps can be taken to reduce the likelihood of HIV being passed on to a baby, making transmission in this way rare in the UK.

For example, the risk of transmission can be reduced by:

• giving antiretroviral medicine to a mother and her newborn baby
• giving birth by caesarean section
• not breastfeeding

You cannot catch HIV from:

• giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation
• being sneezed on by someone with HIV
• sharing baths, towels or cutlery with someone with HIV
• swimming in a pool that’s been used by someone with HIV
• sitting on a toilet seat that someone with HIV has sat on

Stds That Are Less Likely To Spread Through Kissing

• Syphilis: This is a bacterial infection that can be spread by having sex. It isnt usually spread by kissing unless you and your partner both have syphilis sores present in your mouth when you kiss.

• Herpes simplex virus 2 : This is a virus that spreads easily in body fluids. HSV-2 can cause painful blisters in your genital area, but it rarely affects your mouth. This means its less likely than HSV-1 to spread through kissing.

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Am I At Risk Of Becoming Infected With Hiv When Visiting The Doctor Or Dentist

Transmission of HIV in a health care setting is extremely rare. All health professionals are required to follow infection control procedures when caring for any patient. These procedures are called Universal Precautions for infection control. They are designed to protect both patients and health care professionals from the transmission of blood borne diseases such as Hepatitis B and HIV.

Myth : Hiv Can Be Transmitted Through Oral Sex

OK, theres a teensy bit of truth behind this myth, but the chances of getting HIV by going down on someone are so low that the risk almost doesnt exist.

According to a 2013 research review, the risk of transmitting HIV through oral sex without a condom or other barrier method is about 0.04 percent.

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Estimating The Risk Per Exposure

A satisfactory answer to the question, How high is the risk of HIV transmission through oral sex? has been notoriously elusive. Collecting reliable data is challenging for several reasons:

• Very few people report oral sex as their sole risk.
• If a person practises any other form of unprotected intercourse in addition to unprotected oral sex, any resulting HIV infection is usually attributed to the higher risk behaviour.

Many reports of oral transmission are in the form of isolated and anecdotal reports, rather than from observational cohorts or other studies with more rigorous follow-up.

Most cohort studies following men who only practiced oral sex, or serodiscordant couples, have tended to show very low levels of risk, in many cases approaching zero. A few studies have given higher estimates which are difficult to reconcile with the others.

antiretroviral

A substance that acts against retroviruses such as HIV. There are several classes of antiretrovirals, which are defined by what step of viral replication they target: nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors protease inhibitors entry inhibitors integrase inhibitors.

Is There A Risk Of Hiv Transmission When Getting A Tattoo Or A Body Piercing Or While Visiting The Barber Or Hairdresser

Persons who carry out body-piercing and tattoos should follow procedures called “Universal Precautions“, which are designed to protect both workers and their customers from the transmission of blood borne infections such as HIV and Hepatitis B. The guidelines state that any instrument designed to penetrate the skin such as tattoo or acupuncture needles should be either used only once and discarded , or should be thoroughly cleaned and sterilized after each use.

When visiting the barber there is no risk of infection unless the skin is cut and if there is a transfer of infected blood. If the instruments are contaminated with infected blood and are not sterilized between clients there is a risk of HIV transmission.

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What Should I Do If I Need To Clean Up Blood

HIV does not usually survive long outside of the body, but contact with blood should be avoided.

Hepatitis C can survive in dried blood at room temperature for several weeks, and hepatitis B can survive in dried blood for around a week outside the body.

To clean up blood that has been spilled, wear rubber gloves and mop up the liquid using bleach and warm water . Use warm, soapy water to clean away blood spilled on someones body.

Put the waste, used gloves and bloodied clothes in a plastic bag, seal and throw away.

Bites That Break The Skin

A bite that opens the skin and causes bleeding can lead to the transmission of HIV. However, according to the

goes up with increasing viral load.

Viral load is highest both during the early phase of HIV and without treatment with antiretroviral medications. Taking antiretroviral medications every day can reduce a persons viral load to very low levels that cannot be detected through testing.

In this way, antiretroviral medications are not only a treatment, but an important tool for prevention. When HIV cannot be detected in the blood, a person living with HIV cannot sexually transmit the virus to a partner without HIV.

This principle is called Undetectable = Untransmittable .

It can take up to 6 months of taking antiretroviral medications each day to achieve an undetectable viral load.

A persons viral load is said to be durably undetectable when all test results are undetectable for at least 6 months after the first undetectable result.

• human papillomavirus infection

There are a couple reasons that STIs can raise HIV risk. First, the symptoms of many STIs include genital inflammation, sores, or ulcers. These can all increase the chance of transmitting the virus from one person to another.

Second, like HIV, transmission of STIs is associated with some of the same types of behaviors, such as engaging in sex without a condom or other barrier method.

Some research has also indicated that certain STIs may be more with HIV transmission than others. These STIs include:

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What Stds Can Be Spread Through Kissing

Small microorganisms can cause STDs. Some of these microorganisms can live in your saliva, or they can cause sores in your mouth. This makes it easier for them to spread between people when they kiss, especially during deep, open-mouthed kissing.

Lets break it down into what STDs you can and cant get from kissing.

How Safe Is Oral Sex

Giving oral sex to a woman is also considered relatively low risk. Transmission could take place if infected sexual fluids from a woman got into the mouth of her partner. The likelihood of infection might be increased if there is menstrual blood involved or if the woman is infected with another sexually transmitted disease.

The likelihood of either a man or a woman becoming infected with HIV as a result of receiving oral sex is extremely low, as saliva does not contain infectious quantities of HIV.

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Prevention Of Infection While Kissing

There are a number of things you can do to reduce the risk of passing on, or catching, an infection while kissing. You should try to:

• Avoid kissing when you or the other person is sick.
• Avoid kissing anyone on the lips when you, or they, have an active cold sore, warts or ulcers around the lips or in the mouth.
• Maintain good oral hygiene.
• Cough and sneeze into a hanky if you have a cold.
• See your doctor about immunisations. Vaccines are available to prevent some infectious diseases, such as chickenpox, hepatitis B and group C meningococcal infection.

Myth : Abstinence And Condoms Are The Only Ways To Prevent Hiv

Abstinence was touted as a go-to way to prevent HIV transmission back in the 80s and 90s. And even today, that potential benefit is used as an argument for abstinence-only sex ed in schools, despite lots of evidence that those programs just dont work.

Not into the idea of a no-sex lifestyle? Condoms are another option. Research suggests they can reduce the risk of HIV transmission by as much as 95 percent every time you do the deed. Thats why condoms have been recommended as an HIV prevention tool for decades.

However, as of 2012, people got a new option for preventing HIV. Thats when the Food and Drug Administration OKd the first pre-exposure prophylaxis .

These meds offer people with known risk factors, like having sex with someone who has HIV or sharing needles for injectable drug use, a way to reduce their risk of contracting HIV by taking one pill per day.

And it works really well. When PrEP is taken as prescribed, it can slash a persons chances of getting HIV through sex by a whopping 99 percent, according to the CDC.

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Cdc Tells How To Prevent Hiv Infection And How To Prevent Transmission Of The Hiv Virus

Teenagers increasingly are at risk for HIV and AIDS as the epidemic spreads throughout the heterosexual population in the United States and worldwide.

The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Preven tion estimates that a teen in the United States gets a sexually transmitted disease, such as gonorrhea or chlamydia, every 11 seconds. HIV can be transmitted sexually, as well as by other routes.

To help you understand how to prevent HIV infection if you are uninfected or how to prevent spreading it to other people if you have HIV, the CDC answers a number of questions about the disease:

What is AIDS and what is HIV infection?

AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, a condition in which the body’s immune system breaks down. Because the system fails, the person with AIDS typically develops a variety of life-threatening illnesses.

HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, is a small germ that causes AIDS. Once a person becomes infected with HIV, he or she can spread the virus to other people, even if the person who has HIV has no symptoms. A special blood test can detect HIV in a person.

Because the virus can hide in a person’s body for years without producing symptoms, anyone who has HIV should be under a doctor’s care. Doctors can prescribe drugs that can help delay or prevent an HIV-positive person from developing AIDS.

How does someone become infected with HIV?

If somebody in my class at school has AIDS, am I likely to get it too?

How Disease Is Spread

Diseases can be spread from person to person in a number of ways:

• Contact spread some diseases are spread directly from person to person, for example during kissing, or indirectly when you touch a contaminated surface or object.
• Droplet spread infected droplets from the nose and throat can usually travel around one metre before they drop onto a surface. Sometimes infected droplets can also linger in the air. Infection occurs when the infected droplet is inhaled or someone comes into contact with a contaminated surface or object.
• Airborne spread some infected particlesfrom the nose and throat can remain in the air for a long time because of their tiny size. They are called droplet nuclei and can be inhaled directly into the lungs.

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How To Talk To Your Partner

STDs can be a tricky, uncomfortable subject to talk about. Here are some tips for having a mature, productive discussion with your partner:

• Set your expectations upfront. If you want your partner, whether new or longtime, to use barrier methods, tell them and be firm about it. Its your body, and your partner has no right to tell you how to have sex.
• Be direct, open, and honest. If youre uncomfortable with having sex without first getting tested or using barrier methods, be clear about this and set the boundaries before you engage in any sexual activity. If you have an STI, let them know before having sex.
• Use barrier methods. Condoms, dental dams, and other protective barriers not only have a high chance of preventing pregnancy but also shielding you against almost all STIs.
• Above all, be understanding. Dont get mad at your partner or yourself if you find out that either of you has an STI. Not all of them are spread through sex alone, so dont assume that theyve cheated on you or kept a secret from you. Some people dont find out they have STIs until years later because of a lack of symptoms, so its important to trust your partner.