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Corona Makes HIV Test False Positive ?

Hello, Can anyone preferable a doctor tell me if being infected by coronavirus can affect the hiv test and giving false positive results ? Thank you.
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Avatar universal
As far as I know there are no doctors on this forum.  Along with the others I don't see why there would be a concern with this virus, but because this virus is brand new to the world I doubt even an average doctor would know the answer to your question.  But know that people are getting tested for the flu as well as corona and that doesn't seem to make a difference.  They are very different viruses.  But I would imagine if any0ne w0uld know such things it would be someone such as an epidemiologist who is involved in studying the novel corona virus.  And who knows anyone like that?  But if you can find one, that's who are leading the attempts to understand this new virus.  Labs that do testing should also know at this point, as they are not only doing the testing for the corona virus but also developing the test kits, so assuming one would answer your question that would be a place to ask.  The other organizations developing the test kits are the CDC and major university medical schools.  
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Meant to add, although this virus is new to humans corona viruses are not.  The common cold is a corona virus.  SARS and MERS are corona viruses.  So again, although you're probably not going to find anyone easily who knows everything there is to know about this new virus, it's still hard to see why it would have any effect on an HIV test, but I'm no expert.
188761 tn?1584567620
COMMUNITY LEADER
False positives are a rare occurrence. It does happen time to time due to hyper sensitivity of the higher generation of HIV antibody tests. However, a positive result has to be backed up with a confirmatory test, which looks for the genetic material of the virus itself and not antibodies. Therefore, if a cross reacting antibody is mistakenly picked up by the HIV test it will be nullified as inaccurate at confirmatory test.

There is no certainty that antibodies to CMV is going to be picked up by HIV antibody test, as stated before, it does happen rarely. No one can predict if and when that happens.

Your risk was substantially low. I am assuming that you are a male and for a male partner in a typical female to male transmission scenario, the risk is low. Many experts find that it takes multiple such unprotected exposures with an HIV positive female partner to contract the virus as it is relatively difficult for the male partner to contract the virus through the urethra. Most importantly, if you are assuming that your partner is HIV positive, it is pretty much an extreme guess because not everyone around us is HIV positive.
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Avatar universal
Hello and thank you for your answer, I dont have coronavirus but I had a risky sexual intercourse. I planned to get tested on a specific day this week but, there is a chance to get coronavirus these days and I just wanted to know if corona can somehow cause misleading results in hiv tests. As far as I know CMV (Cytomegalovirus) can cause falsa positives in hiv results. What are your comments on that?
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2 Comments
What was your high risk sexual activity? Was it Unprotected anal intercourse?
Unprotected vaginal sex
3191940 tn?1447268717
COMMUNITY LEADER
No, there is no scientific reason why Coronavirus, or any other virus, would affect an HIV test in ANY way.  Coronavirus has not been shown to affect the presence of HIV antigens and antibodies, and there is no logical reason why the virus would affect their presence.  Standards HIV tests detect antigens and/or antibodies that are specific to HIV.  

Do you have Coronavirus? And did you have a risk for HIV?
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