Survival of aids virus outside the human body

HIV in blood from something like a cut or nosebleed can be active for several days, even in dried blood. The amount of virus is small, though, and unable to easily transmit infection. HIV survival time in fluid outside of the body can increase when a small amount is left in a syringe.

After an injection in someone with high levels of HIV, enough blood stays in the syringe to transmit the virus. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC , when the temperature and other conditions are just right, HIV can live as long as 42 days in a syringe, but this typically involves refrigeration.

HIV lives the longest in a syringe at room temperature, but can still live up to 7 days at higher temperatures. One older study showed that after 1 to 2 hours in tap water, only 10 percent of the HIV virus was still active. After 8 hours, only 0. Except under very specific conditions, HIV stays active and is able to cause an infection for only a very short time once it leaves the body. Part of the fear of HIV comes from lack of education.

Understanding the facts can prevent misinformation — and HIV — from spreading. The rates and risks for acquiring HIV vary by the type of exposure. Understanding how HIV is transmitted can help you better protect yourself…. Having an undetectable viral load reduces HIV transmission risk. Learn more about HIV and undetectable viral loads here. Discover the importance of…. Human immunodeficiency virus HIV is a virus that….

If you live with HIV, it's just as important to take care of your mental health in addition to your physical health. Although the most important strategy for reducing the risk of occupational HIV transmission is to prevent occupational exposures, plans for postexposure management of health care personnel should be in place.

Although HIV transmission is possible in health care settings, it is extremely rare. Medical experts emphasize that the careful practice of infection control procedures, including universal precautions i. The CDC has not yet been able to establish how the transmission took place. No additional studies have found any evidence of transmission from provider to patient in health care settings.

CDC has documented rare cases of patients contracting HIV in health care settings from infected donor tissue. Most of these cases occurred due to failures in following universal precautions and infection control guidelines.

Most also occurred early in the HIV epidemic, before established screening procedures were in place. While it is possible to get infected with HIV if you are stuck with a needle that is contaminated with HIV, there are no documented cases of transmission outside of a health-care setting. CDC has received inquiries about used needles left by HIV-infected injection drug users in coin return slots of pay phones, the underside of gas pump handles, and on movie theater seats.

CDC was informed of one incident in Virginia of a needle stick from a small-gauge needle believed to be an insulin needle in a coin return slot of a pay phone and a needle found in a vending machine that did not cause a needle-stick injury. There was an investigation by the local police and health department and there was no report of anyone contracting an infectious disease from these needles.

Discarded needles are sometimes found in the community. These needles are believed to have been discarded by persons who use insulin or inject illicit drugs. Occasionally the public and certain workers e. Needle-stick injuries can transfer blood and blood-borne pathogens e.

CDC does not recommend routinely testing discarded needles to assess the presence or absence of infectious agents in the needles. Management of exposed persons should be done on a case-by-case basis to determine 1 the risk of a blood-borne pathogen infection in the source and 2 the nature of the injury.

Anyone who is injured from a needle-stick in a community setting should contact their health-care provider or go to an emergency room as soon as possible. Antiretroviral medications given shortly after being stuck by a needle infected with HIV can reduce the risk of HIV infection. The health-care provider should then report the injury to the local or state health department.

Case reports of female-to-female transmission of HIV are rare. The well-documented risk of female-to-male transmission shows that vaginal fluids and menstrual blood may contain the virus and that exposure to these fluids through mucous membranes in the vagina or mouth could, potentially, lead to HIV infection. A risk of HIV transmission does exist if instruments contaminated with blood are either not sterilized or disinfected or are used inappropriately between clients.

CDC recommends that single-use instruments intended to penetrate the skin be used once, then disposed of. Personal service workers who do tattooing or body piercing should be educated about how HIV is transmitted and take precautions to prevent transmission of HIV and other blood-borne infections in their settings.

If you are considering getting a tattoo or having your body pierced, ask staff at the establishment what procedures they use to prevent the spread of HIV and other blood-borne infections, such as the hepatitis B virus.

You also may call the local health department to find out what sterilization procedures are in place in the local area for these types of establishments.

There are extremely rare cases of HIV being transmitted via deep "French" kissing but in each case, infected blood was exchanged due to bleeding gums or sores in the mouth. Because of this remote risk, it is recommended that individuals who are HIV-infected avoid deep, open-mouth "French" kissing with a non-infected partner, as there is a potential risk of transferring infected blood. It is very rare, but in specific circumstances HIV can be transmitted by a human bite.

In , CDC published findings from a state health department investigation of an incident that suggested blood-to-blood transmission of HIV by a human bite. There have been other rare reports in the medical literature in which HIV appeared to have been transmitted by a human bite. Biting is not a common way of transmitting HIV, in fact, there are numerous reports of bites that did not result in HIV infection. Severe trauma with extensive tissue damage and the presence of blood were reported in each of the instances where transmission was documented or suspected.

Bites that do not involve broken skin have no risk for HIV transmission, as intact skin acts as a barrier to HIV transmission. There is no risk of transmission from scratching because there is no transfer of body fluids between individuals. Any person with open wounds should have them treated as soon as possible.

In some persons living with HIV, the virus has been detected in saliva, but in extremely low quantities. Contact with saliva alone has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV, and there is no documented case of transmission from an HIV-infected person spitting on another person.

HIV is not transmitted by day-to-day contact in the workplace, schools, or social settings. HIV is not transmitted through shaking hands, hugging, or a casual kiss. You cannot become infected from a toilet seat, a drinking fountain, a door knob, dishes, drinking glasses, food, or pets. Although contact with blood and other body substances can occur in households, transmission of HIV is rare in this setting. A small number of transmission cases have been reported in which a person became infected with HIV as a result of contact with blood or other body secretions from an HIV-infected person in the household.

Persons living with HIV and persons providing home care for those living with HIV should be fully educated and trained regarding appropriate infection-control procedures. From the start of the HIV epidemic there has been concern about HIV transmission from biting and bloodsucking insects, such as mosquitoes. However, studies conducted by the CDC and elsewhere have shown no evidence of HIV transmission from mosquitoes or any other insects—even in areas where there are many cases of AIDS and large populations of mosquitoes.

Lack of such outbreaks, despite intense efforts to detect them, supports the conclusion that HIV is not transmitted by insects. The results of experiments and observations of insect biting behavior indicate that when an insect bites a person, it does not inject its own or a previously bitten person's or animal's blood into the next person bitten.

Rather, it injects saliva, which acts as a lubricant so the insect can feed efficiently. Diseases such as yellow fever and malaria are transmitted through the saliva of specific species of mosquitoes. However, HIV lives for only a short time inside an insect and, unlike organisms that are transmitted via insect bites, HIV does not reproduce and does not survive in insects.

Thus, even if the virus enters a mosquito or another insect, the insect does not become infected and cannot transmit HIV to the next human it bites. There also is no reason to fear that a mosquito or other insect could transmit HIV from one person to another through HIV-infected blood left on its mouth parts. Several reasons help explain why this is so. First, infected people do not have constantly high levels of HIV in their blood streams.

Second, insect mouth parts retain only very small amounts of blood on their surfaces. Finally, scientists who study insects have determined that biting insects normally do not travel from one person to the next immediately after ingesting blood. Rather, they fly to a resting place to digest the blood meal. There are no documented cases of HIV being transmitted during participation in sports. The very low risk of transmission during sports participation would involve sports with direct body contact in which bleeding might be expected to occur.

If someone is bleeding, their participation in the sport should be interrupted until the wound stops bleeding and is both antiseptically cleaned and securely bandaged. There is no risk of HIV transmission through sports activities where bleeding does not occur.

Setting the stage: host invasion by HIV. Nat Rev Immunol. Expert consensus statement on the science of HIV in the context of criminal law. Survival of human immunodeficiency virus in suspension and dried onto surfaces. J Clin Microbiol. Survival of HIV-1 activity after disinfection, temperature and pH changes, or drying. J Med Virol. Evaluation of dried blood spot samples for screening of hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus in a real-world setting.

Sci Rep. Webb R. Needlestick injuries, discarded needles and the risk of HIV transmission. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Valdiserri RO. Am J Public Health. Pediatric injuries from needles discarded in the community: Epidemiology and risk of seroconversion.

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