Dr. Sean advice on testing

[needadvicedoc]

Hi Dr Sean, had unprotected vaginal exposure with "higher" risk female. she is college student but i consider her higher risk.  I had a few symptoms mainly just a semi productive annoying cough occurring several weeks after which stuck around for several more weeks sometimes causing slight wheezing , one bout of diarrhea (only happened once, not whole day thing)  and cold symptoms, dry feeling mouth, brief sore throat for a day or two may be from cough or bronchitis. not very severe. no fever or rash that i found or noticed. few other symptoms but i know they are not all that important because theyre vague and vary.  had hiv 3rd gen antibody at 8.5 weeks-59 or 60 days. negative I didn't notice a whole lot of symptoms maybe because I wasn't looking for them either.
questions-
1)what percentage of people would test positive by this time?
2) Do you think I need to retest or can I move on with my life? I keep thinking HIV and its very frustrating
3) Is a bad cough a symptom of early hiv dr sean?
4) How often do you see a negative test at 60 days later go positive? Is it fairly uncommon
5) I read something by Dr. Jose on this site saying these tests may soon be changed to 8 week window period, is there a big difference in reliability between 8+ weeks and 12 in healthy young male? Is this recommendation outdated somewhat?
6) Random but I was just wondering- say you had 500 healthy normal immune individuals who recently acquire hiv, how many would likely be positive by my testing time? All? Or very close to it?
Thank you doctor

[ryebank]

Do you have figures. (%) for a 4 and a half week antibody test please?

[needadvicedoc]

Also does canada use third gen i asked the nurse what generation she looked at me weird and just said theyre very up to date with their tests so i assumed it was

[needadvicedoc]

thanks for the response..final questions- 1) if my symptoms that worried me had anything to do with hiv, wouldn't i have tested positive being a healthy person able to produce antibodies  i read a doctor on this site said tests normally turn positive within 1-2 weeks after symptoms.

2) do symptoms generally come on at the same time?or come one after another, come and go etc.

3)I read that cold and cough symptoms typically aren't ars related and it is moreso flu symptoms normally, which i didn't really have. Is this true? (I wasn't checking my temp really because I wasn't originally worried but nothing seemed out of the ordinary really.)

4) if you were me based on what you know about 3rd gen tests would you retest at 12 weeks or is it really that reliable at 8 and basically not going to change?  (I didn't like the whole process, plus I had to take a day off work due to the time conflicts) and if my test at 60 days is like 99.9% or something close to that , couped with the fact she probably didn't even have HIV then I would like to try and just put it behind me

THank you sean.

[Dr Sean Cummings]

Good Morning,

Thanks for your post. You've asked :-

1)what percentage of people would test positive by this time?

The overwhelming majority - the available data indicates greater than 99% at 6 weeks - we do not have figures for 8 weeks.


2) Do you think I need to retest or can I move on with my life? I keep thinking HIV and its very frustrating

You can move on.

3) Is a bad cough a symptom of early hiv dr sean?

It could be but equally of course it could be just a bad cough.


4) How often do you see a negative test at 60 days later go positive? Is it fairly uncommon

We don't - we've not experienced this. The 3rd generation tests and the 4th generation tests are extremely accurate.

5) I read something by Dr. Jose on this site saying these tests may soon be changed to 8 week window period, is there a big difference in reliability between 8+ weeks and 12 in healthy young male? Is this recommendation outdated somewhat?

Yes, the recommendation is completely outdated - but, across the world there are very many different testing methods and they are made by different manufacturers so so it is difficult to be completely and universally dogmatic - the thrid generation tests we use - the INSTI is an excellent and very accurate test.


6) Random but I was just wondering- say you had 500 healthy normal immune individuals who recently acquire hiv, how many would likely be positive by my testing time? All? Or very close to it?

I would say all. You would need a much larger number to start getting random testing failures.

I hope that helps you. If it doesn't then the thing to do is to have one final HIV 3rd generation test now and call it a day. I do not believe there is anything unusual about you or the testing. I believe you to be HIV negative.

very best wishes, Sean