Condom Use Among HIV Positive People

Didn’t our mothers always tell us not to always believe what we read? In a world that seems to be propelled by information found on the internet, it is hard to distinguish between reality and complete and total fiction. How many times have I been forwarded e-mails by friends that detail a child’s abduction down to the color of clothes the child was wearing when last seen only to fact-check on Snopes and find out that it is all a myth? Millions of people get burned with scams and false information they find online every single day; however, with that being said, I think most people still have a lot of faith in the medical and scientific information they find online and in publications. Why would THIS information be false? Well, as it turns out, it very well could be.

In a statement issued by the Swiss Federal Commission for HIV/AIDS, it was declared that those patients infected with HIV that are currently on an antiretroviral drug treatment would not be able to sexually transmit the virus to a partner that was not infected with HIV. This startling declaration was brought under investigation by researchers from the University of New South Wales National Centre in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research (NCHECR). These researchers feel that this statement misleads those infected with HIV and could therefore cause the rates of transmission to potentially quadruple in different regions. Dr. David Wilson from NCHECR states, “If the Swiss Commission’s conclusions were adopted at a community level and resulted in reduced condom use it would be likely to lead to substantial increases in infection.”

Dr. Wilson’s research takes into consideration the fact that infected patients who read the misleading information and take it to heart could decide to stop using contraceptives with sexual partners; this, in turn, could result in legal consequences for transmitting the disease to a previously uninfected person. Dr. Wilson goes on to state that the rates of HIV transmission could easily quadruple within one decade amongst those couples where one partner is HIV-positive and the other partner is HIV-negative (also known as a serodiscordant couple) should they decide to stop using condoms when having sex.  An expert on mathematical modeling, Dr. Wilson performed his modeling on 10,000 serodiscordant couples. The data demonstrated that if condoms were abandoned, 215 transmissions would occur from females to males, 425 transmissions would occur from males to females and 3,524 transmissions would occur from males to males. Dr. Wilson states, “While it is true that the individual risk of HIV transmission per act is fairly small for people on antiretrovirals, the risk of transmission over large numbers of acts could be substantial.”

The president of the Australasian Society for HIV Medicine, Dr. Jonathan Anderson, adds, “When the viral load goes down in the blood due to antiretrovirals, it might not go down in fluids. This may be confusing. Antiretrovirals can complement consistent condom use but replacing condom use with medications may end in disaster.” He goes on to say, “People who are diagnosed with HIV infection tend to reduce their number of new sexual partners, use condoms more consistently and disclose their status to their current partner or partners. We are concerned that there may not be the same behaviour if people believe themselves to be non-infectious.”