concerned for 12 yo daughter

Hi

my cousin lives with us and sleeps around alot without protection, so his hiv status is questionable. He hugs and kisses my kids on the face alot. I dont normally worry because i understand saliva is not infectious. However i am freaking out about an incident that happenned on the weekend. My cousin cut his bottom lip deeply while shaving and it took a long time to stop bleeding. Not long after he kissed my girl on the bridge of her nose. She has a flesh wound on her nose which may have been a popped pimple or a scratch from her baby sister. anyway i dont think it was actively bleeding at that stage (although i cant rule it out and it bled a little earlier) but it looked redish and i suppose it could be classed as an open wound. Would she be at risk if we assume that when my cousing kissed her a drop of his blood touched her wound. I am really worried and would appreciate more than a yes or no answer.

[H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D.]

HIV is not transmitted in the ways you imagine.  All over the world, people live in households of HIV infected people.  They hug, kiss, and share bathrooms, kitchens, towels, and eating utensils with the infected people.  Yet in the quarter century of the known HIV/AIDS epidemic, with millions of infected people worldwide, not one household contact is known to have caught HIV, if they did not have sex or share injection equipment with the infected person.  Not one.

Can I imagine a possibility from the sort of events you describe.  Sure.  I can also imagine getting hit by a meteorite, but I don't go out of my way to take precautions against it.

On top of all that, you don't know that your cousin has HIV.  If he is heterosexual and not an injection drug user, he probably is at low risk, isn't infected, and never will be.  But even if he had known AIDS, you would not need to take any precautions to protect your kids or anyone else.

Bottom line:  On several grounds, your worries are unwarranted.  If you enjoy your cousin's company, and if your kids like him, please don't try to limit his visit or change his behavior.  It simply isn't necessary.  

Regards--  HHH, MD

[aussiet]

Thanks Doctor, and thanks for the great service you provide.

[aussiet]

A follow up question if i may. this involves my 8 year old who fell down and scratched her knee. it was bleeding. my cousin kissed her on the knee to stop her crying. he then wipped the cut with tissue. again, he had shaved earlier and had cuts on his face. i am assuming a drop of blood may have touched her wound when he kissed her. to make things  worse he may have inadvertendly pushed his blood into the wound when he wipped it with tissue exposing the blood stream. what do you think?

[Vance2335]

Dr HHH will answer but to throw my 2 cents into this. It is not a risk. Trivial cuts and scratches are bound to happen and do not provide a route to infection. Also kissing anything is not going to transmit HIV.

To help you out even more you said this person shaved earlier...cuts would not still be bleeding. So any idea that he pushed blood into a cut would simpley just not happen.

[H. Hunter Handsfield, M.D.]

See the first paragraph of my reply above, which takes into account the sorts of events you describe in your follow-up comment.  There is no HIV risk from such an event.

That's all for this thread.