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 Kgomotso, thanks – though your question isn’t very clear. Stopping treatment is not a good idea, becasue otherwise HIV will steadily reduce your immune system. Then you becaome at high risk of serious health problems. Healthy food and vitamins are generally a good idea but they won;t help HIV unless you are also taking HIV meds. You can still have sex if you want to, whether or not you are on meds, but your partner needs condoms or PrEP if you are not on effective treatment.
Can a person living with hiv stop treatment. Abstain from sex, eat healthy food and taking vitamins live a normal life?
Hello Martins and thanks for getting in touch.
This is quite rare as the medication the undetectable person is taking are protecting them.
You can read more about this here:
https://i-base.info/qa/9869
Please , can a person with hiv pass on hiv to a person who is already undetectable by sex?