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Two people diagnosed HIV positive after receiving 'vampire facial' in New Mexico
At least two clients of a shuttered New Mexico day spa tested HIV positive, a state health official said, possibly from receiving a "vampire facial."
The two people were infected at VIP Spa in Albuquerque between May and September 2018, according to the New Mexico Department of Health.
The infections came via "injection related procedures," state regulators said in a statement. The health department did not elaborate.
But NBC affiliate KOB reported that the procedure in question is the so-called "vampire facial" — when blood is drawn from a client's body and then re-injected into his or her face.
State health officials fear there might be more people who could test positive for HIV, and hepatitis B and C.
So, slept with any mortals/vessels lately?
Previously: "Vampire Facial" Gone Wrong
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday May 02 2019, @05:00AM (8 children)
The place was closed for being unlicensed and practicing unsafe handling of human blood for injection. Then, two customers with nothing else in common who are otherwise at low risk end up with the same strain of AIDS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @05:10AM (7 children)
Where do you see this low risk, nothing in common info? And how many different "strains" of HIV (not aids) are there? How common is this "strain"? And why only two people months apart out of the hundreds or whatever that must have been exposed?
Missing a lot of info here.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @07:06AM (5 children)
Not the GP. But to answer your question: if you count CRFs of HIV, there are over 100 known HIV-1 and HIV-2 subtypes out there. Of course, different strains are more common in different populations.
My guess as to what happened here, is that the clients tested positive for HIV and were added to the database. The epidemiologist went over the data about their strain and activity reports and linked the two. My guess is they reported getting the same procedure done on the same day at the same place, which would have caused them to get flagged due to potential needle reuse or other biosecurity/SOC violation at the facility.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @08:45AM (4 children)
Well your guess is wrong since the exposure happened from May to Sept. And if these people were so "low risk" why did they get hiv tested to begin with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @02:56AM (3 children)
Out of curiosity, I looked at their preliminary epidemiological report. According to them, during an inspection of the VIP Spa, they found numerous biosecurity and standard-of-care violations that put people at high risk for contracting blood-borne pathogens, including HIV, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C. Under New Mexico law, if a high risk facility fails so badly that they are forced to suspend operations they required to pay for testing for all patients, regardless of their assessed risk because this instantly makes every patient high risk.
Since testing was initiated, between 100 and 150 people have been tested. Numerous people had all sorts of blood-borne diseases, which for most diseases could have come from anywhere. However, subsequent investigation showed that the two patients had the same unidentified isolate of HIV. This is a dead giveaway that they probably got it from the same source and relatively recently, even if you don't know their other risk factors, because of HIV's well know distribution and virology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @11:50AM (2 children)
Wtf does this mean? Sounds like something a pseudoscientist would say. How common is this "strain" they are talking about?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @09:12PM (1 child)
Researchers have a good understanding of how HIV is distributed among world populations. For example, if someone has subtype K, then they are either in the Congo or Cameroon, or can have their exposure directly traced to those countries through the intermediate patients to the patient zero that brought it from there. See https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/sites/news/files/HIV.jpg [ucl.ac.uk] for a very rough picture. Now underneath each subtype, there are even more specific varieties of HIV, all the way down to single CRFs, which can literally be unique to an individual person. In addition, it is pretty well know how HIV mutates and strains undergo recombination, which aids in the determination of where and how long people got the virus. Finally, the vectors for infection are understood very well. Therefore, it is possible for the trained professionals to say where people most likely got them and to follow infections back to their source.
But your second question is literally impossible for anyone other than the state and CDC epidemiologists to answer because they haven't identified the isolate. It could literally occur in 3 people in the entire world, or be super-common in a place like China, or Australia, but have few known cases here, or be the primary B strain in Albuquerque.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 03 2019, @09:25PM
To clarify just a bit more, when I said "they haven't identified the isolate," I meant they haven't done so PUBLICLY. I'm sure they know exactly what virus they have down to the serotype, if not its genotype, but they haven't let the public know.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 02 2019, @08:18AM
What a fucking idiotic question is that.
"stains" ??? HIV (not aids) ???
Dumb as a fucking post.
Confirmation! Dumber than a post. A post may actually read the fucking summary before posting dumb things.