Woman May Have Contracted HIV from Manicure

Yes! I was as surprised as you were reading the headline. Should you be worried?

"For most women, the worst thing that’s happened at a nail salon is that they’ve chosen a polish color they end up regretting — or maybe they’ve had their nails clipped a little too close. But for one 22-year-old woman in Brazil a manicure turned potentially deadly: Getting her nails done may have given her HIV. 

The young woman, whose case is detailed in the journal AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses, was recently diagnosed with advanced HIV yet failed to meet any of the standard conditions for transmission — she’d never had sex, a blood transfusion orsurgery, or gotten a piercing or tattoo. 

Doctors were befuddled as to how she had contracted the virus.
After confirming her claims, her doctors dug deeper, searching for any incident that could have infected her. The only possibility: The patient recalled sharing manicure instruments 10 years prior with her cousin, a manicurist who was later diagnosed with HIV. Detailed analyses revealed that the two women were, in fact, infected with highly similar strains of the virus, leading the researchers to conclude that manicure instruments are potential routes of HIV transmission."

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