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Vaginal fluid exposure - I am at risk ?
#164146 - 11/14/05 11:46 PM
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Can someone advise me. I made 2 stupid mistakes after fingering(non insertive, just the top of the vulva but got my fingertips damp) what I would now call a high risk African girl
First mistake, I rubbed the side of my eye with the knuckle of my little finger. Second I opened a bottle of water – very carefully and took a drink – while waiting to use the bathroom
Now I am pretty scared. What if there was body fluid on my knuckle? (there should not be, but you never know) and what if I got a tiny amount of body fluid in the mouth of the bottle ?
How long does the virus survive on the hand ? I am I at high risk. ?
I have now convinced myself the girl is more than likely HIV + and that I may be infected. Please help have not slept well for 2 weeks.
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There would be extremely low (zero risk) of HIV infection from rubbing your eye with the finger that may have been covered with vaginal secretions. Most probably the finger was dry by the time it got to your eye in which case the HIV if any was toast. Even if it was not dry, the NIH says that blood splatter on a mucous membrane has less than 1 chance in 1000 of infection and vaginal secretions typically has a lot lower viral load than blood and just exactly how much vaginal secretions can you really get on your finger?
Not much.
The second item of touching your bottle of water, that's two levels of indirect transfer. Zero risk. Even if you gave the woman cunnilingus, it's hard to find a documented case of transmission that way.
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Thanks, for your answer. I managed to sleep last night. I have another question. The NIH statistics, do they relate to HIV-1 and HIV-2. I have heard that HIV-2 is more infectious. I was in Africa when this happened, although not in a country listed on Thebody.com as having HIV-2.
And do they take into account people taking PEP after the exposure ?
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I made the assumption that this was USA. Sorry.
HIV-2 from what I have read is *less* easy to transmit than HIV-1 and takes somewhat longer to progress to AIDS (like maybe 15 to 20 years instead of 10 without ART, but this is just a guess I made up, so take it with a pound of salt - the number I mean, not that it generally seems to have slower progression).
So, if it was HIV-2 it's even less probable that you were infected:
Here are the African countries where there is greater than 1% prevalence of HIV-2
HIV-2 infections are predominantly found in Africa. West African nations with a prevalence of HIV-2 of more than 1% in the general population are Cape Verde, Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast), Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. Other West African countries reporting HIV-2 are Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Niger, São Tomé, Senegal, and Togo. Angola and Mozambique are other African nations where the prevalence of HIV-2 is more than 1%.
You can get more details on the CDC website:
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pubs/facts/hiv2.htm
Bottom line, you are at even lower risk of HIV-2 than HIV-1
PEP is not taken into account in the NIH statistics.
If you do a google search though, you will see that for health care workers who did a course of PEP it decreased the risk 79% compared to people (presumably before PEP became the standard of care for needle stick injuries) who did not take PEP. (And the 79% figure was derived from people taking AZT Monotherapy. Nowadays, PEP consists of at least two NRTIs like Combivir or Truvada and the doc may throw in Sustiva or a Protease Inhibitor on top of that.)
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Thanks again. I feel not so worried now.
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