Question
Does drinking tea or alcohol before an HIV test affect the result?
20 September 2010. Related: All topics, HIV testing.
Answer
Thank you for your question.
No, drinking or eating anything would not affect your test result.
For more information please follow this link and read the section titled ‘Can anything affect my test results?’
I was just wondering becuase before my test I had tea.
Nothing. You are HIV positive or you are not. Very occasionally a positive result can be false because of other infections as it says at this link under the section about false positives. However, this is extremely rare. A confirmatory test which is always done when someone is positive would then rule this possibility out.
Can I ask what things do affect a test then?