As a medical practitioner, i have always wondered why majority of the HIV POSITIVE women we see have HIV NEGATIVE husbands, most especially the pregnant ones. I know, the first thing that comes to mind is Infidelity but these women had sworn that there were faithful and what's more, I believe them. Is there a scientific reason or any other 4 this?

from the way i see it, women are more susceptible to the virus than men. a man may carry the cd4 virus but appear negative. if he has sexual contact with a woman without protection, chances are that the woman will get infected with HIV. thats why there are more HIV negtive women than men.

Using the general principle that it takes an average of 3 months for seroconversion to occur in an HIV infected person (to read as positive), if the husband had gotten it before the wife, it only makes sense that he should be positive way before the wife seroconverts. As for females being more susceptible to the virus, this is the first i am hearing it.

peacettw:

As a medical practitioner, i have always wondered why majority of the HIV POSITIVE women we see have HIV NEGATIVE husbands, most especially the pregnant ones. I know, the first thing that comes to mind is Infidelity but these women had sworn that there were faithful and what's more, I believe them. Is there a scientific reason or any other 4 this?

sorry poster but i just dont believe this fact ONE BIT. there might be few cases out there but to say that the MAJORITY of infected married women have negative husband is far fetched.

please feel free to post any link/research/facts to your claim other than what you believe.

@Poster
I believe,the elisa and western blot tests for hiv antibodies are highly sensitive but not very specific tests.Depending on the test kit used, they can give you a false positive result for an array of other ailments (abt 70 of them) eg rheumatism, fibroids, malaria, TB, and early pregnancy are just a few.
Although , no one has actually done a survey in this country, this phenomenon affects quite a few 'baffled' expectant nigerian mothers. A year after their husbands still test negative.
this issue(of false +ves) is well documented by hiv researchers on the net, their work isnt hard to find.

Sexual transmission is only one means of transmission of HIV infection. African women don't usually share their sexually history voluntarily with a physician because of fear of stigmatization. Also females are more susceptible to transmission than men because their internal Instruments has a large surface area and can be easily traumatized especially during pregnancy and puerperium.
There are other means of transmission of HIV infection: blood transfusion & use of unsterilized equipment. Some of the positive partners may test HIV negative because they are still in the window period or because the test kits are not sensitive enough to test them positive. Also, some of the women may have a false positive result because of expired kits.
After a positive test result a confirmatory test must be done and the test should be repeated after 3 months if the initial test result was negative.

peacettw: As a medical practitioner, i have always wondered why majority of the HIV POSITIVE women we see have HIV NEGATIVE husbands, most especially the pregnant ones. I know, the first thing that comes to mind is Infidelity but these women had sworn that there were faithful and what's more, I believe them. Is there a scientific reason or any other 4 this?

Quite simple. It's much easier for women to contract the virus than men. So, the women probably cheated or contracted it via some other means, but the husband has not contracted it yet since HIV does not transmit to heterosexual men easily in the absence of other STDs like gonorrhea, chlamydia etc..