How 'vampire facials' at an unlicensed spa left three women with HIV

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The woman's HIV diagnosis was puzzling.

Her only recent sexual partner tested negative. She didn't report injecting drugs or undergoing a blood transfusion. But she did receive a cosmetic rejuvenating procedure known as a vampire facial, in which a person's face is injected with their own blood through microneedles.

In the coming years, disease detectives discovered that's how she and two other women who went to the same unlicensed New Mexico spa with unsanitary practices probably contracted HIV. This marks the first known transmission of the virus through nonsterile cosmetic injection services.