Reasons to change treatment

Sometimes you need to change treatment, even if you are feeling well.

The main times are:

• If your current combination did not reduce your viral load to less than 50 copies/mL
• If your viral load was undetectable but has started to rise again while you are on treatment (‘viral rebound’).

In both these cases your treatment would be said to have failed.

A third reason to change treatment is:

• If your combination is working but the side effects are too difficult.

This guide mainly deals with the first two situations. However, we include some information on changing treatment due to side effects here. It is now very common, and usually very easy, to change treatment because of side effects.