Correlation of Nonspecific Antiviral Activity with the Ability to Isolate Infectious Hiv-1 from Saliva

Abstract
Despite evidence of HIV in the saliva of HIV-positive persons, oral transmission of the virus appears to be a rare event. Researchers have isolated infectious virus from only a small percentage of saliva samples from HIV-infected patients, even when virus can be isolated from peripheral-blood samples from the same persons1,2 or when HIV DNA is detected in saliva by the polymerase chain reaction3.