Dear Dr. Peg,
Should I get tested for HIV? I'm in a new relationship, and we're getting ready to have sex. But I'm a heterosexual woman, have never done drugs and have only had three other sex partners in my life. It seems to me like I'm at low risk for HIV, so I don't need to get tested. But some of my friends think I should. What do you think?
Doubting Debbie
Dear Debbie,
Yes, you should get tested. Why? Because there is a small chance you could have it, it is treatable and, most importantly, because everybody's doing it. Getting tested, that is.
When HIV was first identified in the '80s, little was known about it, and there was no treatment. Testing was primarily done to protect the nation's blood supply, because nobody even knew whether an HIV-positive person could infect another person.
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Within a couple of years, the contagious nature of HIV was understood, and testing was expanded to include diagnosis and infection control. Still, for years, mostly high-risk groups got tested.
HIV is now very well studied, and there are good treatments for it. A diagnosis of HIV/AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence. New medications have drastically decreased transmission, especially from mother to unborn child, and increased the health and lifespan of infected persons. Because of these developments, HIV has now become a disease worth finding early, which is where screening tests come in.
Screening for a disease means testing a lot of people in hopes of picking up a few positive cases before it's too late. According to the Centers for Disease Control, diseases worth screening for are serious diseases that can be cheaply diagnosed before symptoms arise and for which early intervention can save years of life. HIV/AIDS definitely qualifies on all counts.
In fact, the CDC is now officially recommending that everyone between 13 and 69 get screened for HIV. Everyone. Just like we screen for hypertension by taking your blood pressure or for cervical cancer by doing PAP smears, we should be screening everyone for HIV infection.
I said you could have it. I'm not trying to scare you but to educate you. The face of HIV infection is changing. The poster child of HIV used to be a 30ish, promiscuous, gay white man. Nowadays, the newly infected person is likely to be a young, heterosexual woman.
Here in New Mexico, there is an increase in HIV infections in young people, older people, heterosexuals, women, Hispanics and American Indians. HIV is just a germ, after all, passed from one person to another through blood and body fluids.
Sure, there are certain groups that are at higher risk than others, but just about everybody has some risk. And the more people we test, the more cases we find early enough to treat.
My eyes usually glaze over when I'm faced with statistics, but here are some that made even me sit up. About a million people in the U.S. currently have HIV, but a quarter of them don't know they have it. New Mexico is a medium-prevalence state with about 3,000 known HIV-positive persons. That means there could be 1,000 more New Mexicans carrying this virus who don't even know it.
More eye-opening stats: About 150 New Mexicans are newly diagnosed each year, and more than half of them are diagnosed late, which means there is less than one year between HIV diagnosis and full-blown AIDS. If they were diagnosed early, they could have stayed healthier longer. Half of the newly infected persons nationwide are under 25 years old and one-third are women. Of the women who have HIV/AIDS, 80 percent got it from heterosexual sex with high-risk partners.
OK, I'll stop with the numbers. I hope I have made my point, which is that if everyone gets tested for HIV, we can catch it early in those who have it. You are right: As an individual, you are not at high risk of being HIV positive. But I still hope you will get tested, for all the reasons above.
In fact, I recommend you and your prospective partner get tested for all sexually transmitted infections before you start having sex.
An HIV test at the Student Health Center costs $20. Call 277-3136 to make an appointment.
Peggy Spencer has been a UNM student-health physician for 16 years. E-mail your questions to her at Pspencer@unm.edu. All questions will be considered, and all questioners will remain anonymous. This column has general health information only and cannot replace a visit to a health care provider.
