What are the factors that determine my risk of getting infected or reinfected with HIV?
Five main factors determine risk of HIV transmission: 1. Prevalence of HIV in the community. If HIV infection is very rare in the population of people with whom you have sex, it is pretty unlikely that you’ll get infected. But if HIV is common in the community (as it now is in almost all urban gay communities…about 1 in 7 urban men who have sex with men have HIV), then it’s easy to get infected. 2. Number of Partners. If you have sex with very few people, your chances of getting HIV are lower than if you have sex with many. 3. Number of encounters with each partner. HIV doesn’t get transmitted every time you have sex, even if one person is HIV+ and one is HIV-. But if you have sex many times with a person who is infected, that increases the risk. It’s like Russian Roulette. 4. Level of risk in each specific behavior. Different sex acts have different risks of transmission. We have no way of knowing the absolute risk for a specific behavior, but we can rank different behaviors based on
Five main factors determine risk of HIV transmission: 1. Prevalence of HIV in the community. If HIV infection is very rare in the population of people with whom you have sex, it is pretty unlikely that you’ll get infected. But if HIV is common in the community (as it now is in almost all urban gay communities…about 1 in 7 urban men who have sex with men have HIV), then it’s easy to get infected. 2. Number of Partners. If you have sex with very few people, your chances of getting HIV are lower than if you have sex with many. 3. Number of encounters with each partner. HIV doesn’t get transmitted every time you have sex, even if one person is HIV+ and one is HIV-. But if you have sex many times with a person who is infected, that increases the risk. It’s like Russian Roulette. 4. Level of risk in each specific behavior. Different sex acts have different risks of transmission. We have no way of knowing the absolute risk for a specific behavior, but we can rank different behaviors based on
