Regular HIV Testing And Home HIV Test Kits
Testing yourself for HIV on a regular basis is an important step to help you stay on top of your health status and a way of providing you with information to be as honest as possible with potential barebacking partners. It is important to remember that testing yourself regularly does not guarantee that you will remain HIV negative, but regular testing plays an important role for barebackers to help reduce the spread of HIV within our community. You can choose to test yourself at a sexual health clinic or doctor, but you can also test yourself for HIV in the comfort of your own home using a home test kit. If you want to learn more about Human Immunodeficiency Virus and HIV tests, Wikipedia is a useful online resource you might like to check out.
There are a number of factors which can impede on the accuracy of an HIV test and this can cause problems for those who do their best to be honest about their HIV status. From the time when a person is first infected with HIV, it can take between two to eight weeks and sometimes up to three months for people to develop detectable antibodies. For this reason, a person who tests themselves shortly after being infected with HIV can receive a negative test result, referred to as a false negative result, but they may have HIV. This could result in the tested person being confident about their HIV negative status, so they may then tell potential sexual partners that they are HIV negative. This is why regular HIV testing is important, because if a new infection is missed, it can be picked up more quickly during a future HIV test.
Regular HIV testing is important for those who want to be aware of their HIV status, but for some people the thought about visiting a sexual health clinic or doctor every few months to get tested for HIV can be overwhelming or embarrassing. This is a perfectly natural reaction, but this feeling doesn’t help to build up the courage to visit a sexual health clinic or doctor to get tested. Even though most health care professionals are friendly and respectful, many people worry about attending clinics because of sexuality and comfort issues. Having the ability to test yourself in the comfort of your own home is a great way to check your HIV status without having to visit a clinic or feel uncomfortable around others during a time which can be stressful.
If you do test yourself at home, it’s a good idea to have the telephone number for a HIV counseling service or support group on hand, just in case you need someone to talk to after you have taken your test. You may not feel that you need to take this step, however, it is recommended that you have this information available in case you find it necessary after you’ve taken the test. Some kits may provide you with telephone support, while others may not. You may even consider thinking about options prior to taking the test in the event that a positive result is returned to help make the situation more manageable for you, rather than being in shock and feeling like you have little or no resources available to you.
There is only one home HIV test which is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is the Home Access® HIV-1 Test System manufactured by the Home Access Health Corporation. A number of rapid test kits are FDA approved, but only for use at clinics where the results can be interpreted by a medical professional. The Home Access® HIV-1 Test System is not a rapid test kit where you test yourself and find out the results within fifteen minutes, the kit is actually a sample collection kit where you take a blood sample and then send it away to a laboratory for testing. You are issued with a code which comes with the kit and this code is used to obtain your results, which makes the testing process anonymous.
To learn more about approved home test kits, you may want to visit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website, which includes warnings and information about home test kits. The FDA may not approve home test kits where the results are provided “rapidly” in under fifteen minutes for a number of possible reasons. It could be because the results are not analyzed in a laboratory environment, or medical professional in a clinic, or where counseling may not be available or because positive test results cannot be monitored and recorded statistically. Consumers need to decide whether or not they wish to use a kit which is not approved by the FDA and whether they can even purchase such kits from their location.
Rapid home test kits can be an ideal way to ascertain initial information, but if there is any doubt with the results or if you require confirmation of the results, attending a clinic or visiting your doctor is recommended. The kits should only be used for initial testing and follow-up testing should be carried out to ensure that the results are accurate. Remember that it may take up to twelve weeks for the detectable antibodies to show up in test results, which is known as the “window period”. The FDA website has published an article called Vital Facts About HIV Home Test Kits, which is an essential read if you are considering purchasing a home test kit.
Getting yourself tested on a regular basis may not prevent the spread of HIV, but it may help to reduce it because more people will be aware of their HIV status. Now that you are equipped with this information, you need to decide whether home HIV test kits are something which you feel will benefit you, or whether regular clinic visits will increase your level of confidence. There are a number of companies on the internet who supply home HIV test kits, however, you need to be aware that some companies may not be reputable or may make false claims about the effectiveness of the kits they supply.
One company which supplies rapid home HIV test kits is STD Home Test, and they also supply a range of other Sexually Transmitted Infection test kits. This article is not recommending that you purchase any home tests kits from STD Home Test, the purpose of providing you with this information is to give you a starting point as to where to look for rapid home HIV test kits if you decide to give them a try. There are other companies which sell home test kits on the internet also, so please ensure that you make a purchase from a company who you feel comfortable with along with being confident about their products.
STD Home Test supplies rapid home test kits which comply with ISO 9001 and 13485, but these kits do not have FDA approval. There are two different types of rapid HIV test kits available from STD Home Test, the first is a urine test kit which requires one drop of urine and in less than fifteen minutes a result is given. The blood test kit requires one drop of blood and in less than fifteen minutes a result is given. Both of these kits test for HIV I, II and all subtypes (A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H and O) according to the product information, but you need to remember that a negative test does not rule out infection by HIV if the antibodies were not present at the time the test was taken and it does not determine the quantitative concentration of HIV either.
The importance of regular testing for HIV negative barebackers is clear. Because of the HIV window period, there is the chance that a test may give a false negative result if there aren’t detectable antibodies at the time the test was taken. It is possible to transmit HIV when antibodies are not detected in the system, which is a serious issue when it comes to HIV testing. The reason why regular HIV testing is important for high-risk sexual activity such as barebacking is because there is less time involved between tests, which can limit the potential exposure to sexual partners. Without regular testing, the virus can spread more quickly, so whether getting tested at a clinic, doctor or at home, any test is better than no test, but please always take care to ensure that the testing method you choose is reliable.
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