Please doctor help me, ASAP

[helpme3674]

Hi doctor,
I'm really worried about this, i had sex with a positive female. It was protected. We decided to do anal.The condom broke. i was alittle bit drunk so i didn't notice at the moment. 8/9 days after i started to get all this symptoms, sorethroat, little bit of fever, malaise(vomitting), rash, chills at some part of the day and feeling cold, sweating at night. alittle bit of muscle pain and also a white tongue and i have lost weight. I got a test (elisa) at 36 days after exposure don't know which generation but i live in canada, i think it must be good, and it came back negative. The thing is i have been stressed afeter all these symptoms and when those symptoms were gone, i had a real flu, why im saying real flu because i went to a camping after all the other symptoms went away, and it was cold so i got a runny nose... i want to know if my stress and the flu can affect my results, and how much can i relie on these result?

Thank you doctor.

[Edward W Hook, MD]

Not everyone who gets HIV develops symptoms but those who do tyically develop antibodies within a week of the beginning of symptoms. EWH

[ricki464]

Thank you doctor, just for my knowledge, is this why they say that 6 week is a good time to test, because if someone gets his symptom at 4 week (because they say ars comes at 2-4 week as i read), so it takes aproximative 10 days to appear (antibodys) in the blood?

Thank you doctor, and i won't ask any other questions,

[Edward W Hook, MD]

No, stress/anxiety would not effect your ability to make antibodies and, in this way make you test inaccurate. Believe the tests- they are very good.  EWH

[ricki464]

Doctor, im the one who wrote this, medhelp disabled my account dont know why, so i couldnot write back. so i did this one here.
Just to come back on it,

Can stress afect the imune system to the point to not get detected at 5 week? (Normally i dont get sick often). After all these symptoms, i got really scared, i know that the immune systeme is weakened after stressing alot, and i havent been sleeping since my symptom went away, consediring i got the flu (ars) and stressed that much, could this have made me not create enough antibody that make this appear in the 36 days?

Thank you doctor

[Edward W Hook, MD]

Welcome to the Forum. following anal sex with an HIV infected sex partner, your risk for infection is 1 in 100 (1%), thus the odds are in your favor that you would not get infected. furthermore, if she was on therapy, your risk for infection was even lower still.

The flu-like illness you describe was not HIV.  I say this with confidence as when these sorts of symptoms occur in early HIV, they are due to the reaction of the virus with antibodies that are beginning to form. As a result, if your symptoms had been due to HIV, your blood test would have been positive a week following the beginning of your symptoms. That you did not have a positive test on day 36 is strong evidence that you r symptoms were not due to HIV.   That you had the flu a little while later would have no effect on your antibody development

Since your 36 day test was 36 days after exposure and some people (but not many) can take as long as 8 weeks to develop a positive test, there is a very small chance that you still could have gotten HIV but it is very, very small.  I would suggest another test at day 56 of beyond to be entirely sure you were not infected.  I would be surprised if you were.

Hope this helps. EWH