Hi there,

No need to apologize!

It’s great that you went in for STI testing about two months after the exposure that you are worried about. Most infections are likely to show up by that time, so the fact that they were all negative is very reassuring. You can have a look at the STI’s at a glance chart to see the window periods for most common STIs, and you’ll see that most (including Hepatitis B) are shorter than 2 months. So, I think it’s highly unlikely that any of your results will change at 12 weeks. 

It is possible to get Hepatitis B from unprotected oral sex, but since your test was negative after about 7 weeks, it’s very unlikely that you caught this. If you are worried about getting Hepatitis B in the future, though, you can get the vaccine against Hepatitis B at an STI clinic, public health unit or travel clinic. Condoms also help protect against Hepatitis B, HIV and many other STIs.

You also asked about HIV. It’s very very unlikely that you would get HIV from oral sex. It is possible in theory if you had a sore in your mouth when you gave oral sex, but it is still extremely uncommon to get HIV this way. HIV can take up to 12 weeks to show up on a blood test. I am quite confident that if your only exposure was through oral sex that it will be negative at 12 weeks, but it’s probably good to do a 12 week test just to ease your mind. It’s a great idea to do one more test for syphilis at that time as well. We are seeing a lot of syphilis in BC in men who have sex with men at the moment, and this is one infection that can be passed through oral sex. (It might help to know that syphilis is curable if you ever did test positive.)

Many people are anxious about STIs and while waiting to get tested. We have posted some strategies for dealing with this on our “worry” page. 

Hope this helps,

Health Nurse