Question
Can my wife and I have direct sex without being infected?
1 August 2016. Related: All topics, CD4 and viral load, HIV transmission.
My wife is positive and I’m negative for almost four years now, and her CD4 is 390. Can we have direct sex without being infected?
Answer
When you say direct sex do you mean not using condoms?
Well, the results just in from the PARTNER study are a great help in answering this question. This study reported no transmissions after couples had sex more than 58,000 times without condoms.
But it’s important that your wife is taking HIV meds (ART) because ART can reduce your viral load to undetectable levels. And this can dramatically reduce your risk of infection to just a very tiny risk.
The longer your viral load has been undetectable, the more confident you can be. The main caution would be that if viral load does increase, you might become infectious without realising it.
If you are having sex without condoms, this might be a reason to monitor viral load more frequently.
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