Anyone can get HIV if they engage in certain activities. You may have a higher risk of getting HIV if you :
- Have unprotected sex. This means vaginal or anal intercourse without a condom or oral sex without a latex barrier with a person infected with HIV.
- Share needles to inject drugs or steroids with an infected person. The disease can also be transmitted by dirty needles used to make a tattoo or in body piercing.
- Receive a blood transfusion from an infected person. This is very unlikely in the U.S. and Western Europe, where all blood is tested for HIV infection.
- Are born to a mother with HIV infection. A baby can also get HIV from the breast milk of an infected woman.
If you fall into any of the categories above, you should consider being tested for HIV.
Health care workers are at risk on the job and should take special precautions. Some health care workers have become infected after being stuck with needles containing HIV-infected blood or less frequently, after infected blood comes into contact with an open cut or through splashes into the worker's eyes or inside their nose.
HIV Tests
The only way to know if you have HIV is to take an HIV test. Most tests looks for signs of HIV in your blood. A small sample of blood is taken from your arm. The blood is sent to a lab and tested for HIV. There are other tests available that check for HIV in the urine and oral fluid. The urine test is not very sensitive. There are currently two FDA approved oral fluid tests. They are OraSure and OraQuick Advance.
Because of the inaccurate results, the FDA has not approved any of the home-use HIV tests which allow people to interpret their tests in a few minutes at home. There is however a Home Access test approved which can be found at most drugstores. In this test blood from a finger prick is placed on a card and sent to a licensed laboratory. Consumers are given an identification number to use when phoning for results and have the opportunity to speak with a counselor if desired.
Clinics that do HIV tests keep your test results secret. Some clinics even perform HIV tests without ever taking your name (anonymous testing). You must go back to the clinic to get your results. A positive test means that you have HIV. A negative test means that no signs of HIV were found in your blood.
Before taking an HIV test :
- Ask the clinic what privacy rules it follows
- Think about how knowing you have HIV would change your life
- Ask your doctor or nurse any questions you have about HIV, AIDS or the HIV test
The above information thankfully comes from the webmd.com at the following link.
