By
Stephen Abbott
Submitted On February 01, 2015
If you have intercourse with one or more partners, you are in
danger of contracting a venereal disease like HIV. Your risk for
contracting HIV or any other sexually transmitted disease increases each
time you have unprotected intercourse with a person you do not trust.
To reduce your risk for infection, always have intercourse with a
condom. Even as you use protection, doing a STD test is important.
As the risk of catching HIV is high everywhere, you should take a test at least once a year. Testing yourself will help you know your status before you develop the last-stage HIV infection. Now you can test yourself at home with a HIV test kit. It can be bought online, depending on where you live. Note that a home use kit lets you test yourself in a private area and get an instant result. There are two types of kits: HIV self-test kits and HIV postal test kits.
With the former, you will take a sample of saliva, use the kit to test it and wait for your results. There will be no need to send your sample to a laboratory for analysis. With the latter, you will take a sample of your blood or saliva and send it to a local laboratory for thorough examination. Then the results will be sent to you in private through a phone call from a doctor or by a text message.
The self-testing kits work in a simple manner. You will simply take a saliva swab and test it for antibodies with your kit. The result will be clearly shown on the kit and there will be no confusion when reading. It is imperative to note that self-testing HIV kits do not detect an infection that might have occurred in the past three months. If you think that you might have been exposed to the virus within three months prior to the test, you should use a blood sample.
A blood test takes longer to produce a result but tends to be more effective. If you receive a negative result through self-testing, you should not do a confirmation test unless you failed to follow the test instructions carefully. In addition, you may repeat the process if you had unprotected intercourse or used shared needles with a person whose HIV status is not known to you within the window period of the test kit you are using.
Moreover, you can avoid the test and take Post Exposure Prophylaxis drugs to stop an infection from happening. It is possible to get a reactive result. This sort of outcome does not mean that you have HIV. Even if antibodies are detected, there could be a chance that you are HIV negative.
So, you are advised to take a further test at the nearest testing centre. Finally, you can receive a positive outcome. A positive result can be confirmed through further clinical tests. And if you are indeed positive, you should seek counseling as well as use available anti-HIV medicines.
As the risk of catching HIV is high everywhere, you should take a test at least once a year. Testing yourself will help you know your status before you develop the last-stage HIV infection. Now you can test yourself at home with a HIV test kit. It can be bought online, depending on where you live. Note that a home use kit lets you test yourself in a private area and get an instant result. There are two types of kits: HIV self-test kits and HIV postal test kits.
With the former, you will take a sample of saliva, use the kit to test it and wait for your results. There will be no need to send your sample to a laboratory for analysis. With the latter, you will take a sample of your blood or saliva and send it to a local laboratory for thorough examination. Then the results will be sent to you in private through a phone call from a doctor or by a text message.
The self-testing kits work in a simple manner. You will simply take a saliva swab and test it for antibodies with your kit. The result will be clearly shown on the kit and there will be no confusion when reading. It is imperative to note that self-testing HIV kits do not detect an infection that might have occurred in the past three months. If you think that you might have been exposed to the virus within three months prior to the test, you should use a blood sample.
A blood test takes longer to produce a result but tends to be more effective. If you receive a negative result through self-testing, you should not do a confirmation test unless you failed to follow the test instructions carefully. In addition, you may repeat the process if you had unprotected intercourse or used shared needles with a person whose HIV status is not known to you within the window period of the test kit you are using.
Moreover, you can avoid the test and take Post Exposure Prophylaxis drugs to stop an infection from happening. It is possible to get a reactive result. This sort of outcome does not mean that you have HIV. Even if antibodies are detected, there could be a chance that you are HIV negative.
So, you are advised to take a further test at the nearest testing centre. Finally, you can receive a positive outcome. A positive result can be confirmed through further clinical tests. And if you are indeed positive, you should seek counseling as well as use available anti-HIV medicines.
HIV and AIDs has no permanent cure but it can be managed with
drugs. But you need to know your HIV status first. To test yourself
privately at home, you can read more about our HIV test kit today.
Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Stephen_Abbott/1957564
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