Home > Who should take PrEP > Serodiscordant
PrEP is for everyone who may be at risk of HIV, including people whose partner has recently been diagnosed with HIV or if you do not know your partner’s HIV status. PrEP can provide an opportunity to support your sexual health and help to protect you from HIV.
A serodiscordant partnership is where one partner is HIV negative and the other is living with HIV.
If you are HIV negative and your sexual partner is living with HIV, you might want to consider PrEP in certain circumstances.
If your partner has been diagnosed with HIV, has been taking HIV medication for at least 6 months, and their viral load is undetectable, there is no risk of HIV transmission through sex. An undetectable viral load means that the level of HIV in their body is too low to be measured by a blood test and will not be transmitted through sex. In this case, you do not need PrEP.
If your partner is newly diagnosed with HIV and has only just started treatment, you may want to consider PrEP until their viral load becomes undetectable.
If you have condomless sex with more than one sexual partner and don’t know their status, HIV PrEP can provide an opportunity for you to control your sexual health and can reduce your chance of becoming infected with HIV.
A downloadable leaflet (PDF) to help people in serodiscordant relationships, where one partner is living with HIV and the other is HIV negative, decide if HIV PrEP is right for them. It describes what HIV PrEP is, who can use it, how you can access it, how it’s taken and how supports sexual health.
‘Treatment as Prevention’ (sometimes shortened to TasP) refers to the effect that HIV treatment has on HIV transmission.
U=U means if you’re taking your HIV medication every day for 6 months, you can go to your doctor to find out how much HIV is in your blood.
