Can HIV/AIDS be transmitted through mosquito bites?
Disease description:
I am a 23-year-old male. Recently, the weather has been getting increasingly hot, and mosquitoes and other insects have become more prevalent. I would like to know whether HIV can be transmitted through mosquito bites.
Doctor's answer (1)
Dr. Liu Wan
HIV/AIDS cannot be transmitted through mosquito bites. When a mosquito feeds on the blood of an HIV-infected person and subsequently bites another individual, it does not transmit the virus to the new host. This is primarily due to the following reasons:
First, HIV cannot survive inside the mosquito’s body and is rapidly digested in the mosquito’s stomach.
Second, when a mosquito takes a blood meal, it does not regurgitate or inject blood from a previous host.
Third, although minute traces of infected blood may remain in the mosquito’s mouthparts, the quantity of virus present is extremely low and rapidly becomes inactive in the external environment—thus posing no risk of infection to a new host.
