California HIV.com is sponsored by Dr. Arani, MD, a board certified physician who has experience testing and diagnosing STDs including HIV. We are a treatment and testing clinic and lab with a physical address. Highly confidential private sector
Post Exposure Prophylaxis
72 Hours Chance to Remain HIV Negative
We are 100% Private and confidential institution, we do not receive any public/ governmental funding, we do not check your SS# or your income or any type of qualification or send letter to your home.
California HIV, Dr. Arani Medical Lab
Call 323-231-6000 for prophylactic anti HIV treatment consultation ( No walk in is accepted)
PEP:
It stands for Post exposure Prophylaxis. It means If you get exposed to HIV virus there is a short window period of 72 hours that under supervision of an experience doctor you could take special anti viral medicine. In this way your HIV infection might not get finalized and you increase your chance that you remain HIV negative !
The most effective methods for preventing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection are those that protect against exposure to HIV. Antiretroviral therapy cannot replace behaviors that help avoid HIV exposure (e.g., sexual abstinence, sex only in a mutually monogamous relationship with a non infected partner, consistent and correct condom use, abstinence from injection-drug use, and consistent use of sterile equipment by those unable to cease injection-drug use). Medical treatment after sexual, injection-drug--use, or other non occupational HIV exposure* is less effective than preventing HIV infection by avoiding exposure.
How effective is this method:
There is no randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial to check the true effectiveness of the treatment, and probably will be never be a clinical trial because it is unethical to put people life at risk of HIV infection in order to test a drug.
There are some data available from animal study and health care workers who got exposed with infected blood or HIV positive pregnant mothers who got similar approach might sometimes reduce the risk for HIV infection after exposures by getting PEP.
Qualification: Not everyone would be qualified for the treatment. We evaluate the situation case by case. For example: if you have unprotected intercourse with HIV positive person then you will be a strong candidate.
How much does it cost: Unfortunately PEP management is not cheap. Antiviral HIV medicine, diagnostics and follow up for one month are relatively expensive, but if you become HIV positive then you need all of those for life which is much more expensive than one month.
In conclusion, it will be the cheapest investment of you life for 30 days if it works and change your destiny. However, not everyone is candidate regardless of it is affordable for you or not. We evaluate and inform you if you are candidate when you come for initial consultation. The initial consultation fee is $150.00.
72 Hours: You have only 72 hours after exposure to HIV to take PEP. The sooner the better. You should not wait for the last minute. You have to consider many elements such as , the time you need to spend in the clinic in order to get evaluated, the time you need to spend in pharmacy in order to see that particular medicine is available or not. Pharmacy dispensing time and the most important of all act of God such as you get flat tire, accident on the way you come to the clinic, missing appointment or just simply cancellation of your appointment by act of God on us.
If you start on early hours then you always have time for PLAN B.
We do not guarantee or take no responsibility if you are late for your PEP treatment for any reason or if you acted on clinic non operation hours , unavailability of appointment financial cost of PEP management such as paying for your prescription . This is not the time in your life for procrastinating.
Real Case Report:
We received the phone phone call from a doctor who stated had sexual contact with a new partner which he met at a bar. After the sexual contact he noticed that his genitalia is contaminated with the girl's blood as she was menstruating. He became anxious and started asking questions from her just to realized that she was HIV positive. We initiated post exposure prophylactic treatment as last hope to protect him against HIV infection. He took PEP treatment recommended by Dr. Arani for one month and follow up for 6 months as he was finally declared as HIV negative. We could never find out what would be his HIV status if he had not taken PEP treatment, but that was the only option he had. One of the most important aspect of this example is that he was a doctor himself. HIV does not care about your status if you are poor, rich, prisoner or president. HIV is life changing syndrome it will impact your health, your financial status, your relationship and many other aspect of your life so use protection and get tested routinely and do not put yourself and public at danger.
Risk:
Blood transfusion > Needle Sharing injection Drug Use> Receptive Anal Intercourse > Precautions Needle stick > Receptive Penile Vaginal Intercourse > Insertive Anal intercourse > Incertive Penile-Vaginal Intercourse > Receptive Oral > Incertive Oral
HIV Testing:
Because persons who are infected with HIV might not be aware they are infected, baseline HIV testing should be performed on all persons seeking evaluation for potential HIV exposure. If possible, this should be done with an FDA-approved rapid test kit (we can do it in 15 minutes). If you are already HIV positive then you were not aware of it then maybe you do not need PEP and you need to be seen and follow up for your HIV treatment.
Follow ups:
If patient is candidate for Post exposure prophylaxis then candidate should have follow up evaluation and testing based on CDC recommendation. HIV medicine has risk and side effects and we need to check your liver, kidney and blood test to make sure the medicine is not effecting your health.
Our complete PEP managment program will cover all these area till you get final test in 6 months to confirm your treatment has been successful and you are HIV negative.
Early stages of HIV infection may associated with some symptom. Following table will explain to you what symptom are the most common symptoms, but you should know that you won't have any symptom at begining or no symptom at all to begin with.
Example of Stages of HIV
Viral Transmission (2-3weeks)--->early retroviral syndrome(2-3 weeks)----->Recovery & seroconversion-------> No symptom HIV infection ( average about 8 years)-------> AIDS (avg 1-2 years)-----> Death
Possible Early HIV infection Symptom (retroviral syndrome)
Fever , Headache , Tiredness, Enlarged Lymph nodes
Possible Later HIV symptom(before AIDS)
- Lack of energy
- Weight loss
- Frequent fevers and sweats
- Persistent or frequent yeast infections (oral or vaginal)
- Persistent skin rashes or flaky skin
- Pelvic inflammatory disease in women that does not respond to treatment
- Short-term memory loss
Window Period & Test Timing:
There are many tests available to detect HIV (EIA, Immunoassay, western blot, DNA PCR, Antigen testing, RNA PCR, quantitative viral load etc). The standard HIV test is a HIV antibody test. It will give you your HIV status (must always consider window period and future testing). It takes time for our body to produce antibodies against a HIV infection, so in the early acute phase of infection patients could be infected but the antibody test could come back negative. You must always test again in 6 months to confirm your result.
Why is it important that our lab has permission to test for HIV?
It is a California law intended to protect the safety of patients. HIV testing needs its own exclusive permission from the state. Doctor office in California must
go under proficiency testing even though the test might be cliawaived. We are routinely evaluated by a third party in order to guarantee that our lab is accurate. This means that on a routine basis we receive unknown samples and we run HIV tests on them in order to evaluate our test results. We constantly undergo internal quality control as well, so you could feel confident about the reliability of your test result.
We Can Offer
POOL Sampling Test to detect HIV in just days after exposure (NOT A DNA PCR which can only be done after 1 month)
Because an acute infection, prior to sero-conversion, is usually accompanied by high viral titers (10E5-10E7), it is possible to identify viral NA with sufficient sensitivity in pools of >100 samples per test. The sensitivity of tests per individual sample included in the pool is approximately 2000 copies/ml. However, pooled sample testing has been optimized to detect an impressive low number of 1-5 copies per milliliter of HIV RNA (HIV does not have DNA, it has RNA) in a 512 specimen pool (blood sample). This test has been approved for the screening of plasma products. This is difficult and time consuming especially when a pool becomes positive, but it is an ultimate way of testing.In recent studies, the interval of nucleic acid detection to first antibody reactivity ranged from 6-42 days with a median interval of 11.5 days.
Many unlawful testing websites promote this test as early as 48 hours after exposure which is incorrect: "Nucleic acid tests for HIV DNA, but they are not approved by the FDA for diagnostic purposes" If you are negative with HIV DNA PCR it is not going to be your final result. This test is not to be done until 30 days after exposure. It is the test to be use only in certain circumstances
Misleading Online Testing
One website with hundreds of of "Testing Centers!"
These internet "HIV Testing Center" websites are mostly located outside of California, and most of them are just a website without a physical location. They charge the buyer and send the patients to a lab specimen receiving center without an actual doctor visit or situation specific testing and interpretation of results. They claim they have more than 1800 and sometimes 2500 STD/HIV testing centers/clinics nationwide! This is misleading. These centers are often nothing more than a toll free number, credit card machine and "HIV/ STD test" sales person. For PEP treatment you have only and only 72 hours to get treated to remain possibly negative and if you delayed by waiting for few days of test result then you will loose that window of opportunity.
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Testing rates in the United States remain low, researchers say