Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.Hello, my 19 year old son had an accident on the soccer field where another player's mouth hit him on the knee. His skin was broken and there was a lot of blood from the other players mouth. He is now on a 6week antiviral course, but is very stressed about contracting the virus. What are the chances of contracting HIV from this incident?
Mark H. Katz, M.D.
Regional HIV/AIDS Physician Coordinator
Kaiser Permanente of Southern California
Your scenario does not indicate whether or not the other player is HIV+ or not. It would be usual in such circumstances to ask both players to either disclose their serostatus (HIV positive or negative) or else to do something such as the rapid HIV antibody test. Anyway, that fact that your son is on medications (I assume this is prophylaxis course to prevent HIV) indicates that someone felt this was a potentially high-risk situation.
The good news is that in studies with health care workers, even when there is direct blood to blood contact where one person is HIV+, the chance of the other person contracting it is less than one half of one percent. And with prophylaxis, this drops to virtually nil.
Good luck!
Mark Katz, MD
050301
ASKD050306
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