HIV/AIDS Page 2
Types of Testing
- Oral Swab or Blood Test
The Oral Swab Test takes mucous from your throat and tests it for HIV antibodies, rather than taking blood. It is not available everywhere. An Oral Swab Test That May Be Available Currently Is:
HIV-1 Western Blot Kit from Epitope, Inc., Beaverton, Oregon!
The Blood Test takes a small blood sample and tests it. It is widely used.
- Eliza Antibody, Western Blot Antibody, or Polymerase Chain Reaction
Viral Assay (PCR)
The most common (and cheapest) test is the Eliza antibody (described at the University of Arizona's Biology Project web site), which tests for antibodies to any of the HIV proteins; two Elizas are done on all blood and mucous samples; if these are positive, they are confirmed with a Western Blot antibody test. The Western Blot antibody test, described at the University of Arizona Biology Project web site tests for antibodies to at least several different proteins that are crucial to HIV. It is much less likely to produce a false positive than an Eliza, which tests for antibodies to any HIV proteins.
The Polymerase Chain Reaction tests for the virus itself, but is quite expensive. It may be ordered by a physician
It takes time for both enough antibodies and enough copies of the virus to develop to get a positive test. This time is known as the Window Period.
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- Anonymous versus Confidential Testing
- Anonymous Testing:
- The San Francisco AIDS Foundation recommends anonymous testing. This is because anonymous tests identify your test results by your first name and geographic region only. The results are not identified by your last name, and no one will know that you were tested or that those are your results. If you test anonymously, and want social services such as assistance with drugs, you must either waive your anonymity on the test you have already taken when you get your results (so that your results are matched to your name), or retest confidentially rather than anonymously. Anonymous testing is not available at all test locations.
- Confidential Testing
- Confidential test results are identified by your full name, but are kept confidential. No one is told about the test results except state health agencies which require positive test results be reported to them.
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Where to Test
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When to Test: Going Through The Window Period
If you test during the window period, your test may come back negative, even though you are infected with HIV!
The Window Period is the period after a person is infected during which he or she does not test positive for HIV. Usually testing positive for HIV means testing positive for HIV antibodies. After a person is infected, the body's immune system develops antibodies, which attack the HIV. However, it takes time to develop enough antibodies for the antibodies to show up in an antibody test. Most people develop enough antibodies to get a positive antibody test result within 3 months, and almost all people develop enough antibodies to get a positive antibody test result within 6 months. In rare cases, it may take as long as a year or two to develop enough antibodies to get a positive antibody test.
There is also a test which looks for the virus itself. Enough copies of HIV are produced to give a positive result on this test within about two weeks after being exposed to HIV. However, this test--the PCR or Polymerase Chain Reaction is very expensive.
It is a good idea to wait the duration of Window Period after your last possible exposure to HIV, and then retest. If you are exposed regularly, you should test every six months!
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Interpreting Results
- What Do the Results Mean?
- Negative Results Mean Either:
- That you have been infected, but are in the window period.
- That you are not infected.
Negative results do not mean that you cannot become infected!
- Positive Results Mean Either:
- That you have been infected.
- In rare cases, that you have a false positive. (This is very rare!)
Positive results are reported to state health--though not necessarily using the full name of the person tested. Anonymous test results are not reported by name.
- What Should I Do If I Test Positive?
- Whom Must I Tell?
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It is required by law that you notify all current sex and needle sharing partners. If you do not wish to notify your current partners yourself, your local health department will notify them without giving them your name. You just need to provide your health department with a list of names and addresses. The health department will send a form letter to the people you have listed telling them that they may have been exposed to HIV, and recommending that they get tested. That's it! The department of health will not give your current partners your name, or tell them that you are infected!
Of course, you should warn any new partners yourself before having sex or sharing needles. You should use condoms, too, and clean needles and syringes. This will not only help to prevent the spread of HIV, but will also help to protect you from opportunistic infections! If your partners do not wish to use condoms or discuss HIV, they are not worth your time!
- Can I Get Treatment?
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Nutrition, rest, exercise. . . sound familiar? These all help your body heal naturally. A number of prescription medicines and alternative therapies may also help heal you at different points in your illness.
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- Will Anyone Help Pay the Cost of Treatment?
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A list of medications that the state of Florida provides for persons infected with HIV appears at a link below. Check with your local state health services for medicines provided by your state.
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Take a look at some of HIV's history!
Brief suggestions about exercise, nutrition, restoring immune function, combatting opportunistic infections, and combatting HIV itself.
See IAVI, Vaccine Science--but beware--some vaccinations use live viruses, and may be dangerous; and vaccinations are never 100% effective, and are never tested for a lifetime until people start getting the vaccinations! Options looked at include live vaccinations, made by attaching HIV proteins to live, and generally harmless bacteria and viruses (the live bacteria and virus bring the HIV proteins to the body's immune system which then learns to recognize and respond to the proteins); live vaccines, made from modified HIV (considered very risky at this point); killed vaccines, made with inactive parts of the HIV virus itself; and injections of single proteins from HIV. Though most vaccinations are injected into the blood, scientists are also exploring ways to provide mucosal immunity against HIV. Mucosal responses may be different than blood responses to viruses and vaccination, and the mucosal area may provide a place for HIV and other diseases to live even when they are destroyed in the blood. It seems that the antibody response in the mucosal areas may be crucial in combatting HIV and other sexually-transmitted diseases. Today mucosal immunity is being researched. Unfortunately,immune responses themselves are still not that well understood according to Myron S.Cohen and Joseph Eron's HIV/AIDS Case Management 18, and all HIV vaccinations are still in the trial stages. Again according to Cohen and Eron, most vaccination research is done in the U.S. and on the varieties of human immunodeficiency virus that are found in the U.S.
In their review of a book by Jon Cohen, Shots in the Dark: the Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine (2001), Medscape's Medpulse editors write:
"To date, we have failed to develop any vaccine capable of blocking infection of a sexually transmitted pathogen at a mucosal surface, although not for lack of effort. Clinical trials for vaccines designed to prevent gonorrhea and herpes have failed."
Clearly, much needs to be learned about the immune response in the mucosal areas! And HIV in countries outside of the U.S. needs to be studied. But this does not mean that finding a vaccine is hopeless! (However, as noted above, vaccinations may not be 100% effective; therefore, many people think a vaccination program might leave people vulnerable because people, feeling secure with a vaccine, might stop taking care to prevent HIV and even other 'curable' STD's; perhaps vaccination cannot be that effective without good STD prevention and treatment programs, too.)
Also, according to Researchers in Kenya (HLA Typing May Be Advisable Before HIV Vaccine Trials; reprinted in Medscape last month), responses induced by vaccines may not work with certain types of HIV which resist these responses. The researchers suggests mapping of "local alleles" to determine ways they resist the immune sytem's responses.
(In this research, Dr. Rupert Kaul from the University of Toronto and colleagues identified two novel HLA class I alleles among commercial sex workers in Kenya, as well as among lower-risk women, that restrict cytotoxic T lymphocyte responses to locally prevalent HIV-1 clade A. [Reuters Health Information, October, 2002].)
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- Promise's Story Promise is a twenty-year-old college student who became infected at sixteen. She never thought it would happen to her. Read her story.
- Anna's Story Anna is a mother infected with HIV, trying to stick to her drug regimens. Read her story.
- Sean Strub Strub is the editor of Poz magazine, and has been living with HIV/AIDS since the epidemic's beginning.
- Youth Co--a Canada Site for Young People--'s Magazine, SPICY This mag is full of tips about HIV and AIDS. You'll need Adobe Acrobat to read this, but you can download it here!
- The Center for Disease
Control's National HIV/AIDS Hotline With information about HIV, AIDS, and other STD's: (800) 342-AIDS; Spanish/Espanol: (800) 344-SIDA
- The Body's List of State AIDS Hotlines
- The Orange County Health Department AIDS/HIV Section: (407) 296-5177
- The Brevard County AIDS Coalition (web site still in progress--but getting there!), Post Office Box 2628, Melbourne, Florida 32902;
telephone: (321) 722-0524, (321) 258-1414 (cellular);
Email them at [email protected];
Chair: Donald LaChappelle II.
- Channing L. Bete Co., Inc. To place an order, call: (800) 628-7733
200 State Road, South Deerfield, MA. 01373
Abstaining from Sex, Item number 71278-8-97, and other educational pamphlets and materials are available here!
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Great Reading
- Fiction--Young Adult
- Michael Dorris, A Yellow Raft in Blue Water. (The life stories of three women are narrated in this novel, often regarded as one of the finest novels written this century. Rayona is a half-black, half-Indian teenager with many strikes against her. First, her Black father is never around. Second, her Indian mother is dying from alcohol-related illness. And then there's her good looking but hard drinking cousin, 'Foxy,' who cannot let Rayona forget that her skin is darker than his. And finally there is the reservation priest who has a thing for Rayona. Poor Rayona is everyone's favorite kid to pick on it seems, but she makes new friends, finds a summer job in the wilderness, and almost, almost, though she has never ridden a horse before, rides 'Babe,' a wild, unbroken horse that belongs to her mother's boyfriend, in a rodeo. The rodeo judges do not even realize Rayona is a girl until they decide to award her the hard luck medal. . . For good readers, fourteen and older, adults included.)
- Dorris Lessing, Memoirs of a Survivor. (This science fiction story takes place after 'IT' happens, though we are never told exactly what 'IT' is that has happened. But afterwards, a young girl brings her pet, half-dog, half-cat, home to live with an older woman. The pet, who has seen enough of the world by then, is content to look out from the window as gangs of unsupervised children roam the streets. Gone are the people who understood technology, everything, and technical gadgets dangle around that no one knows how to use. People must learn everything from scratch. For readers, seventeen and up.)
- Graham Salisbury, Blue Skin of the Sea: A Novel in Stories. (A young Hawaiian named Sonny Menendez has spent his childhood with his cousin Keo and his wonderful aunt Pearl after his French mother's death. Now he is old enough that his Hawaiian father feels able to take him back. In this collection of stories about coming of age, Sonny encounters gangs in 'The Year of the Black Widows,' and looks with new eyes at tourism and development in the Hawaiian paradise when he gets his first job in 'Get Mister Red a Beer.' For readers eleven and up--but adults will enjoy this too.)
- Non-fiction
- Anonymous, Go Ask Alice. (The story of a young woman from an affluent family who follows her peers into the seductive world of drugs. Here, the heroine finds a world of abuse and rape. Though she is resourceful enough to start her own business, and has the support of her family, she knows too much about the drug culture to escape. For readers aged 13 and up.)
- Anonymous, It Happened To Nancy, retold and edited by Beatrice Sparks. (The story of a teen who is raped by a boyfriend and learns to live with--and die from--HIV/AIDS. For readers aged 13 and up.)
- Laurie Garrett, The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance. (This collection of essays on microbes and disease today makes fascinating reading, as Garrett, a journalist, has interviewed doctors and disease researchers all over the world. Some of it may be difficult reading for young readers. However, readers who have grown up in neighborhoods surrounded by drugs and sex may relate to 'Distant Thunder.' Another chapter, 'Microbe Magnets,' which explores the evolution of cities and microbes, is not too difficult to follow.)
- Gail B. Stewart, The Other America: People With AIDS. (Interviews with several people living with AIDS. Age 13 up.)
These books are generally available at libraries. If not at your library, you can get them through interlibrary loan. They're also available at Amazon.com.
This page was created by C. E. Whitehead, July, 2001; last updated May, 2002
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