Dear lisa

i am a 23 year old male i had unprotected anal sex for about 5 minutes (i was the giver) with a man i strongly suspect has HIV, we also performed oral on each other for around 45 minutes but did not ejaculate inside each other. what is my risk of HIV? i started pep after 90 hours. In the next few days to a week i had a dry cough and swollen neck glands, maybe 2cm in diameter max. i finish pep in 3 days and right now i feel fine no other seroconversion symptoms. can PEP alleviate seroconversion symptoms?

many thanks,

sam

Hello there- While I can't provide you with specific numbers I would say that your risk for HIV is low (but not zero). It depends on whether the person you had sex with is or is not infected and if they are infected, if they are on any medications to lower their virus level. Certainly since you were the top it is lower than if you had been the bottom. Engaging in oral sex is a very low risk activity. Hard to know what starting PEP after the 72 hour window will do to your risk but it certainly can't hurt. It would seem to me that you are almost 4 weeks out by now so I would strongly recommend testing- if you can get an ag/ab combo test it should be very accurate at this point but a standard ab test will work as well. Hope this helps. take care, LHW