Question
Can someone be HIV negative but an HIV “carrier”?
26 March 2010. Related: All topics.
Answer
No, people are either HIV positive or HIV negative. There is no such thing as a carrier – and the word is not relevant to HIV.
You cannot tell if anyone is HIV positive. The way to know if someone is HIV positive is if they tell you about their status and they have had conclusive evidence from an HIV test.
For more information on testing and transmission please follow this link to the i-Base factsheet.
You need to discuss test results with the doctor and centre where you are being tested.
I have been suffering from yeast infections before i had sex Recently i got sick with it and when they did a test i was found to have the anttibodies of hiv in me but the secound test show up negative doctors are treating my blood am i hiv positive?
The word ‘carrier’ has been misused in the past and as a result has caused some confusion. There are only two types of people, HIV negative and HIV positive. If your boyfriend was born with HIV, then he is HIV positive, not a carrier.
If he is taking ARVs (antiretroviral treatment for HIV), and has an undetectable viral load, then the risk of him passing HIV to you is dramatically reduced.Undetectable vrial load means there is very little virus in his body therefore the risk of him passing HIV onto you is low. However, this does not mean that you cannot catch HIV. The advice is to continue using condoms.
In terms of having a baby, your boyfriend having HIV should not stop the two of you from having an HIV negative child in the future. Because you are HIV negative, your baby will be HIV negative.
Many sero different couples (Where one partner is HIV positive and the other is negative), have had and continue to have healthy HIV negative babies.
There are a number of conception options available for couple like you. For more information on these options, please follow this link to our guide to HIV pregnancy and women’s health.
http://i-base.info/guides/pregnancy/man-hiv-positive
So my boyfriend told me a few weeks ago that he is a CARRIER of HIV. He doesnt have it and it will not turn into AIDS, but he is a carrier. He got it from his parents because his parents both have it. So I am wondering if we ever wanted to have kids in the future, could i get it from him by having sex? and could our child have it as well?
If you tested negative then you do not have the virus. It sounds like you have been lucky so far to have remained HIV negative. That does not mean you cannot become negative if you do not protect yourself.
In 2007 had a baby boy and after 4 months he got sick. He was tested HIV positive. I tested HIV negative, his mother is also HIV positive, even in 2010, last month I did a test but I am still negative. Does that mean I have the virus or not?
The only way to know is by going for a HIV test. For more information on HIV testing please follow this link.
How can someone know that he is HIV positive?
The word ‘carrier’ has been misused in the past and as a result has caused some confusion. There are only two types of people, HIV negative and HIV positive. If you are HIV negative it means you do not have the virus. If you do not have the virus you cannot pass it on to other people. It is therefore not possible to be HIV negative and to infect other people.
Thank you for your response, it was helpful.
Most people I know refer to carriers as people who are HIV negative but they can infect another person, my question is how does this happen? If someone does several tests but the results show that they are negative can they still infect other people? How true is this?