How soon can someone contract HIV from a HIV positive person, just becoming posi!

How soon can someone contract HIV from a HIV positive person, just becoming positive themselves?

I know of someone that just recently tested positive for HIV. He claims, that he was told that since there isn't enough of the virus inside him that he's unable infect other people at this time.

I love this, because I worked for a while as an HIV educator!

HIV is sort of freaky.

It's a retro-virus. It works by using the body's own cells to make more HIV cells. The cell it uses is called the CD-4 cell. It's part of the immune system. HIV is dangerous because the CD-4 Cell is specialized to tell the rest of the body that there's an invader.

If HIV attacks and uses enough CD-4 cells, they (the CD-4) can't reproduce, and they body won't recognize (sufficiently) that HIV is in the body . . . so, it may man a response, but not enough of one, or fast enough.

Because of this -- it can take YEARS (sometimes even 10 years) before HIV can be detected . . . for some tests, it doesn't actually look for the virus -- it looks for the body's response to the virus (and if the virus is attacking the part of the body that recognizes that there's an invader, it can't arm a response).

Even though somebody may not test positive for HIV (because the body hasn't manned a response), they can spread it to other people. Even though a person may not know they have HIV, they can spread it to other people.

If there is ONE HIV virus cell in a human body -- ONE cell (that's like, 1 hundred trillion billionth of the size of a teaspoon) it can latch on to those CD-4 cells, and reproduce . . . it just takes time before there's enough for us to see (or, there's enough of a response from the body for us to see).

Even though we can't see it, it can still be transmitted . . . even though the number of HIV cells (called the "viral load") is low, it can still be transmitted.

If he was told that the number of HIV cells in his body (his viral load) was so low that he was unable to infect other people, the health-care provider who told him that is either a liar, or is incompetent.

That man should know that having sex with others after having been diagnosed with HIV, and either misleading them regarding the diagnosis (or, not telling them about it) can be (in most states) charged as attempted murder.

It's interesting to note that while the cases are few and far between, there have been some remarkable breakthroughs in the treatment and prevention of HIV.

A child was born of a mother who was infected with HIV. Before the baby was born, the mother was treated with a special medication, and when the baby was born, the baby, too, was treated with a special medication. The baby did not develop an HIV infection, because the virus was unable to attach to the CD-4 cells, and was unable to reproduce.

In order to make more HIV cells, the virus has to latch on to the CD-4 cell, at a certain spot. Some African American people lack that special spot (called a surface protein) on their CD-4 cells. That means that the virus is unable to reproduce in their bodies . . . the CD-4 cell is unaffected, so it can recognize that the HIV doesn't belong there, and it can attack it . . . but the person can STILL transmit the virus (even though it doesn't reproduce, and even though the numbers may be very low, in their blood).