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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: 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.