Choosing partners with like HIV status, such as infected person choosing partners known to also have HIV, is called “serosorting”. The safety of serosorting with respect to HIV isn’t really known. There are different strains of HIV and it may be possible to catch a second HIV infection, perhaps one that is drug-resistant and might not respond well to standard treatment of HIV/ADIS. Equally important, even with serosorting, unprotected sex still carries the risk of passing STDs, such as gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, and herpes. In fact, at present there is a massive epidemic of syphilis occurring in HIV-infected gay men in the U.S. and other industrialized countries, probably caused in part by serosorting according to HIV status.
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