Eczema and HIV AIDS transmission

I can't stop thinking about this now, I know the chances must be small from what I have read from even getting it threw say a cut let alone damaged Eczema skin which I imagine is even less deep. But I still can't knock the thought that I imagine with so many chances of exposure from shaking peoples hands or knocking into people hands with my own, people grabbing my hands, etc. while my Eczema has been untreated and bad and if they had cuts and had aids. Is that insane to think? I go to the doctor a lot about the problem and he has never said anything about this or advised me to cover my hands or not to shake peoples hands. I don't know, can anyone put my mind at ease, obviously not lie! But you know what are the chances?

Hmm. That's a good question. I would think if it is bad and your skin is always cracked it might slightly increase your chances. After all, your skin acts a protective barrier against all kinds of stuff. Even little cracks and cuts can let things in, although our bodies can usually fight off most of what gets in.

In order to get HIV from shaking hands, the other person would have to have HIV, they would have to have a cut or something on their hand, and that cut would have to touch yours. So while it might be possible, it is probably not too likely. You could ask your doctor more about it. You could always cover any larger cracks with Band-Aids or liquid Band-Aid. You could also try to avoid shaking hands if it would not make things socially awkward.

As for trying on clothes and shaving, you could ask your doctor about that too. I am not sure about this, but I don't think HIV stays alive to infect another person all that long once it is outside of the body. According to this site dried blood sounds pretty safe:

"HIV is not transmitted through surface contact with dried blood. Incorrect interpretation of conclusions drawn from laboratory studies have unnecessarily alarmed some people. To obtain data on the survival of HIV, laboratory studies have required the use of artificially high concentrations of laboratory-grown virus. Although these unnatural concentrations of HIV can be kept alive for days or even weeks under precisely controlled and limited laboratory conditions, CDC studies have shown that drying of even these high concentrations of HIV reduces the amount of infectious virus by 90 to 99 percent within several hours. Since the HIV concentrations used in laboratory studies are much higher than those actually found in blood or other specimens, drying of HIV-infected human blood or other body fluids reduces the theoretical risk of environmental transmission to essentially zero."
http://ehs.uky.edu/classes/bloodborne/bptr ain.html

Thanks for the reply, the excema in its current state isn't to bad. I haven't itched it in a long time however flares up I think mostly because of using soaps. One parts red and a few cracks that are noticeable if you look at it closely. So are you say it would need to be pretty bad to be even a small risk?

On my other hand (right) at the end of one of my fingers just before the nail there seems to be like tiny red groves, not blood it looks like another layer of skin below the top one. It has been there a very long time and doesn't seem to respond to anything, so might just be really really dry skin? If say it is only down to a lower level of skin is that even a cut?

My guess would be that for the cuts or cracks to really be a problem, they would have to be at the level where they are bleeding. If they are not bleeding, I am thinking that it is probably not deep enough to let HIV through to your bloodstream. You could double check with your doctor on that though.