Thank You for Your answear , and happy new year to You too !

Hi Worried008, I apologise for not getting back to you sooner, wishing you a happy New Year. As soon as an individual is exposed to HIV, their body will begin to produce antibodies in response to the foreign virus. Antibodies will always remain in the blood - usually dormant. If HIV is left untreated, after around 8-10 years the immune system will become so weakened by the effects of the virus - that the individual would now be in the later stage of HIV known as AIDS. Although there is no cure for HIV/AIDS, treatment is now able to suppress the virus and a person living with HIV can live a relatively long and healthy life (if diagnosed early enough). If you were to have been exposed to HIV around 23 years ago, it is very likely that you would be either extremely unwell or to put it abruptly, dead. False negative results occur most often when users test inside of the window period. For example, if a user tests at 1 week it is very likely that not enough antibodies have been produced for the test to accurately detect infection. If the test has been performed correctly and enough blood was supplied etc. the control line will still be present - which alone indicates a negative result. However, the absence of antibodies may not cause the test line to be visible. False negative results are rare and also occur if the user has recently been on PEP or PrEP (but again you must wait 12 weeks before testing to get an accurate result). However, given your time since exposure, I would not worry about your negative result being false. I hope this helps. If you have any other questions or would like me to clarify anything please let me know in the thread below. Thank you, Becky.