Vampire facial leaves women with HIV

Vampire facials carried out at an unlicenced spa in New Mexico left clients with HIV, marking the first time contaminated blood has been transmitted through a cosmetic procedure.

The vampire facial has become popular in the beauty community, with the likes of Kim Kardashian and Gwyneth Paltrow giving them a go.

It's a platelet-rich plasma micro-needling procedure that draws the patient's blood to separate plasma from blood cells before being injected into the face.

When practised safely by a professional, it is said to have minimal side effects. But, that wasn't the case for several women who visited an unlicensed clinic.

A detailed report lifted the lid on the first incident in 2018, which saw a woman between the age of 40 and 50 testing positive while abroad.

The woman said she had no recent blood transfusions, no injection drug use and no sexual contact with anyone other than her partner, who received a negative HIV test result.

The distressing results led to an investigation into the unlicensed spa, which had no official contact information and no formal booking system.

Health authorities reportedly discovered appalling conditions including unwrapped syringes, unlabeled vials of blood, injectables sitting alongside food in the fridge and reused disposable equipment.

The spa was subsequently shut down and the owner was charged for practising without a licence, pleading guilty to five counts and is serving a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence.

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A second client, who had a vampire facial in the summer of 2018, also tested positive for HIV later in the year.

Investigators rushed to track down any other clients, with a couple identified in 2021.

The pair received three vampire facials in 2018 and both had a stage 3 HIV infection.

The investigation was reopened in 2023 and found a fifth case of a woman who received a facial in 2018 and now has a stage 3 infection and was hospitalised with an AIDS-related illness.

"Incomplete spa client records posed a substantial challenge during this investigation, necessitating a large-scale outreach approach to identify potential cases," the authors of the study wrote. Meanwhile, the investigation's finding "underscores the importance of determining possible novel sources of HIV transmission among persons with no known HIV risk factors."

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