Question
How long can I live without HIV drugs?
2 January 2017. Related: All topics, Life expectancy, Living with HIV long-term.
Can you please tell me how long can someone live without taking HIV medication?
Answer
The best way to answer this is to say that modern HIV treatment (ART) means that life expectancy is not affected by being HIV positive. HIV positive people with access to treatment can be expected to live as long as before they became positive.
Without using HIV treatment, life expectancy is related to how quickly your CD4 count drops and how low it gets.
Without treatment, some people see their CD4 count drop to under 200 within a few years of infection, while others people can go for 5-10 years or longer before they need treatment.
See also: Your CD4 count and the risk of becoming ill.
This is different to saying how long you could live. However, without treatment, once your CD4 count falls below 200 life expectancy drops very dramatically.
Note: This answer was updated in January 2017 from a question first posted in November 2011.
Hi Ibrahim, modern HIV meds are incredibly effective. So long as you are careful taking the meds, your viral load should become undetectable and this makes you immune system stronger. This means people can live as long as people without HIV. Starting treatment earlier definitely helps reduce the risk of serious complications. Many people have been taking meds for more than 20-30 years and lead active healthy lives.
Hello to everyone – can someone with HIV live a long time?
Hi Edson, this is very unlikely for most people who are living with HIV. Sometimes people who started treatment very very earlu – before they tested HIV positive – can sometimes get a negative results. Also, very very rare cases have been reported of people who control HIV without treatment, although these people will still generally test HIV positive.
But is there any chance for someone who has been on HIV treatment for a long time to test negative when he/she goes for the test