Question
What happens if I stop taking treatment?
31 August 2016. Related: Adherence, All topics, Changing treatment, Side effects, South Africa, Stopping treatment.
What are the side effects if someone stops taking her medication for HIV?
Answer
Thanks for your question.
May I ask why you are thinking of stopping? Many people find adhering hard at some in their lives but there are ways to make it easier. Likewise if you are suffering side effects – you can switch to meds that better suit you.
Several years ago a very large study called SMART reported that stopping treatment increased the risk of serious complications. These included a higher risk for heart, liver and kidney complications in people who stopped treatment and also a higher rate of some cancers.
If you decide to stop treatment, your viral load is likely to rebound within a few weeks. If you stay off treatment your CD4 count will start to drop over the next few months. When this happens the risk of developing other infections and getting sick increases.
How quickly this will happen though varies a lot. The lower your CD4 count was when you started meds, the quicker your CD4 is likely to fall without ART.
In the SMART study, most people who took a treatment break did pretty well for a short time. However, most people were not able to recover their CD4 count to earlier levels even 18 months after they restarted treatment.
Please talk to your doctor about who you feel. It is not generally good to stop treatment. It is definitely not good to do this without first talking to your doctor.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
Yes. I was diagnosed bearly a month ago but hv strted medication
Hi Henry,
Its not really possible to answer this as HIV affects people in different ways. Have you just found out that you’re positive?
What can be the Expectant life span when u are hiv+ but ignorant of it?
Hi Nony,
If your boyfriend misses doses too often it can mean that HIV bounces back. When this happens HIV can become drug resistant and his meds might not work.
If your boyfriend is taking his meds and is undetectable then there is zero risk to you if you have sex without comdoms.
Can you access PrEP? You can take this if you are HIV negative and it will protect you against HIV.
Can you ask at your boyfriend’s clinic about PrEP for you? Your boyfriend can also ask for help about ways to take his meds when he’s drinking.
Hi
My boyfriend is HIV+ , he has been on meds for a year but he sometimes get drunk during weekends and miss doses or even stop taking meds for a week. How much chances I can be infected?
Hi Maria,
Its very possible that your second test was a false positive, therefore its good to hear that you’re going for another test. Hopefully the test on the 26th will be definitive.
If it does turn out that you’re positive, as your doctor has said you will need to take ARVs.
Hey I would like yo ask ” I got a test on 2 December 2018″ so I was negative .so m confused I went there again this month 2″ the January 2018. My result said positive’ my doctor said I should start drinking medicine” I said no let’s confirm on 26 January”.
Thanks isaka, it is good that are you doing okay now :)
Now I get the more knowledge about how to overcome HIV, thanks a lot for this. We should healthy my friends and follow advice so that we can fight against HIV.
Hi Krishna, if you are HIV positive, modern treatment will give you a normal lifespan. It is easy. If you broke your leg you would have a doctor fix it. If you had TB you would take medicine. HIV is just the same.