Safe Sex/First Relationship Advice

[ThomasTu]

Dear @elderberryblu,

Great to hear from you. Congratulations on your first relationship and great that you have discussed your status openly.

The risk from oral sex is relatively low, but there is potential: How likely is a sexual transmission with a viral load of 65UI/ml and using a condom? - #2 by ThomasTu

Moreover, your viral load of 40k is moderate, but just to give some context about transmission risk:

@ThomasTu

• see figure 2 in this WHO report https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/333391/9789240002708-eng.pdf. It shows that in high fluid exchange setting (birth of a child), maternal virus levels less than 20000 do not result in a chronic infection in newborns, who are very highly susceptible to chronic infection. Of course, it needs to be added that the newborns are vaccinated straight away and given HBIg (this prevents infection in 75-90% of cases, without antivirals).

Hope this helps a bit,
Thomas