Risk from injection with HIV+ undetectable blood?

[Guest]

Not that this would be a thing I would try, but I was curious - what would be the chances of becoming poz if you were to have a syringe of someone's blood who was undetectable injected into you? Undetectable has been proven to be untransmittable sexually, but there isn't any data out there for needle/direct bloodstream contact. Would the low viral load mean that your body "flushes" out the blood before the virus replicates in your body or is even one virion in your blood enough to be infected? What would be the difference if you were injected in different areas of your body, such as intravenously vs. intramuscularly?

[kckinkybtm]

I have wondered about this as well. Not that I'm looking for it that way, but I have friends who slam and are undetectable. They don't share needles, but knowing that many are infected by the sharing of needles, if someone who was undetectable shared a needle with a neg person, is the neg person now at risk? If so, is that why so many who share needles get infected?

[wood]

I doubt there is any info out there on something like this. Needle stick injuries in medical settings are treated the same regardless of the person is undetectable or not on treatment. However you can infer a few things just based on transmission statistics. now these stats are based on someone who isn’t on treatment but they are , blood transfusion 95% infection rate, receptive anal sex, 1-3%. Also remember that in early stages of the epidemic when factor 8 was being made from blood for hemophiliacs, not all people who donated were HIV+, so the theoretical viral load would be much smaller than a unit of hiv+ blood.  Given that kind of info, going back to your original question. I’d give a 5-15% guesstimate chance, and the chance would go higher with the amount injected. Direct blood to blood contact is the perfect way to transmit hiv, so even with an undetectable viral load there is still some in there. The question variable is can it survive long enough in the new hosts body to replicate. If the host was on prep I’d guess the chance would be close to zero.