Please help! I am very worried. I am HIV negative but my husband is HIV positive. For three years we have been trying to reach the insemination conception. There was no success. This year in February we went to IVF/ICSI. I am now 19 weeks pregnant. We are both overjoyed. Before IVF I went to the test and I was HIV negative. Otherwise, my husband is on the HART therapy and PCR is negative to him for years. Can you tell me is there any danger for the baby and whether there is a risk to transmit the virus to her? Whether the virus can survive in the sperm cell or its genetic code? if the baby after the birth of an HIV test? I am very grateful for your response.

Hi.

Hopefully you've been working closely with an HIV-knowledgable obstetrician/gynecologist as well as your husband's HIV specialist during this entire process.

Semen (ejaculate) contains HIV; however, sperm does not. Intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) should be safe, as it involves an embryologist taking a single sperm and injecting it directly into an egg outside the body (in vitro fertilization, IVF) and then implanting the fertilized egg into the woman.

That your husband is on HAART and has an undetectable quantitative HIV PCR RNA viral load significantly decreases any chance for HIV transmission.

As long as you remain HIV negative, so will your baby.

Good luck.

Dr. Bob