HIV and Lesbians
For the first time in two decades, since the discovery of AIDS, researchers were able to verify female-to-female transmission because of two specific factors: 1) the woman’s multidrug-resistant strain of HIV is chemically identical to the virus carried by her HIV-positive partner; and 2) she didn’t have any other risk factors for HIV. She had no history of substance abuse (including injection drugs), she had no tattoos or body piercings, she’d never had sex with a man, and she’d never had a blood transfusion. For two years prior to her diagnosis, she had sex only with her partner.
The case involves a 20-year-old African-American woman from Philadelphia who contracted the virus that causes AIDS from her female partner. The details were released in the February 1, 2003, online edition of the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases. According to the journal, "the route of transmission was probably use of sex toys, used vigorously enough to cause exchange of blood-tinged body fluids."
While this is the first documented case of female-to-female transmission, that isn’t to say it was the first to occur, advocates say. The woman in question is simply the first to fit into a certain set of parameters set by the CDC and deemed acceptable by most researchers. To understand why there have been so few cases of female-female HIV reported, one must understand how the CDC documents transmission. If a woman has sex with another woman and has other risk factors, such as drug use, the CDC would traditionally classify the transmission under one of those factors or as "undetermined." Under the CDC guidelines, heterosexual sex is not ruled out as a risk factor unless a woman hasn’t had sex with a man since 1978.
Some advocates argue that the CDC has overlooked lesbian HIV risk since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. It took over 10 years for the CDC to include in its definition of HIV to female-specific opportunistic infections, and despite the recent case of woman-to-woman transmission, the CDC still does not currently categorize sex between women as a risk factor for HIV. There is little data about HIV and lesbians, and only a handful of studies have included women who partner with women. Lesbians have different sexual practices, which have different levels of risk for HIV. Oral sex is thought to pose a relatively low risk. Acts such as sharing sex toys, hand play with long fingernails or cuts pose higher risk.
RISKS FOR LESBIANS
Of course, women in general have also been under-represented in HIV/AIDS research. Little is known about how AIDS medications affect women, for example; this is particularly true of women of color, who make up almost 25 percent of the 40,000 new HIV infections each year in the United States. There is also relatively little known about the opportunistic infections that affect women, including many that target their reproductive systems.
Over the years, the CDC has funded some small-scale regional studies about lesbians and HIV. The largest of its kind, an ethnographic study of HIV-positive women who partner with women, was conducted during the last few years in New York City and Boston. Its investigators included staff from the Lesbian AIDS Project, the CDC, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the National Development and Research Institutes (NDRI), among others.
PROTECTION
How women who partner with women can protect against HIV:
Know your HIV status and the status of each of your sexual partners.
http://www.curvemag.com/Detailed/375.html
http://www.avert.org/lesbiansafesex.htm
http://lesbianlife.about.com/od/lesbianhealth/a/LesbianAIDS.htm
