The issue with eating sushi when you are HIV-positive is that sometimes (rarely) there can be parasites in the fish. Most people can fight them off, but of course those who are HIV-positive might not be able to. By getting sushi that is handled well/from a "reputable" place, you are less likely to have a problem with that. However, they still recommend that HIV-positive individuals don't eat sushi when their CD4+ T cell counts are low. Once the patients are on medications and their CD4 counts come back up, then sushi is a go.

*smooches* Hi! How are you!

Gothmog is the greatest.

I? Think it's a very, very bad thing. I'm seven plus months into my own sushi-free pregnancy experience (to be followed, I hope, by a year or two of sushi-free breastfeeding) and just like last time around I crave sashimi all. the. time.

If I understand it right, by the way, I think listeria is the threat to watch out for with sushi. It's also the reason you're not supposed to eat deli meats, soft cheeses, and half a dozen other things while you're pregnant. Small quantities of listeria, too small to make you ill if you're healthy and not pregnant, can make a pregnant woman seriously ill and can cause both early and late-term miscarriage.

IG can probably give the straight scoop on this much better than I, but my sense from doing way too much reading is that pregnancy is an immuno-suppressing process, because a pregnant woman whose immune system is strong and fully functioning would probably react against the fetus as if it were a foreign body and work to expell or kill it. As a result, icky bugs that normally would pass right under the radar become a more serious threat. *sigh* And that means no sushi and no unpasteurized brie, even with really good crackers and plenty of caraway seeds.

The agony of it all . . . Now I'm drooling for tekka maki.

Slice & Dice Chop Shop 2004

You're totally right about the potential for a mother to have immunological problems with a fetus. It is sort of like transplant rejection (the baby is half like dad, so it is a half-mismatched transplant) The immunological processes that occur to allow pregnancy are pretty interesting. I wouldn't really call pregnancy immunosuppressing though. It is more of a site-specific immunosuppression (as opposed to the whole body being immunosuppressed). The uterus is immunosuppressed, but the rest of mom is pretty normal. The placenta mediates most of the tolerance. Basically, if mom's immune system tries to do anything bad to the fetus, the placenta tells it who is boss. Otherwise, mom's immune system is okay-in fact it needs to be strong because mom ends up passing some of her immune system to the baby during gestation and also through breast-feeding. The real worries about infection are to make sure that mom has enough nutrients and to make sure that mom doesn't pass an infection to the baby, whose immune system isn't fully developed.

Gothmog is the greatest.

Thanks, IG -- I just knew you'd be able to explain this better than I could!

Slice & Dice Chop Shop 2004

Thanking the Maker that I am a banana and don't need to go through all these machinations.

Ladies -- my hat's off to you!

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