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.
I became positive Nov 2 2002. I have never been on any medications at all. Cd4 never below 450 and viral load never above 10,000… I never think about it because of the stress it causes. Stress will kill you before it does… just saying
Hi Alpheus,
Please see Q2 here: https://i-base.info/qa/what-are-the-most-asked-questions But the simple answer is no. If you want to control your HIV you need to be on ARVs.
Hi can the HIV be treated naturally without ARVs using natural herbs not drugs
Hi Tony,
Many thanks for your comment. Yes, I think you’re saying most people can expect to live longer if they are on HIV treatment. Best wishes, Roy
without treatment varies to person to person 1 might live a few yrs and some may live longer , this isn’t math or science nut common sense that’s like someone that has the flu, the 1 that is taking medicine to treat the flu will recover faster than someone that didn’t , it goes the same with hiv without medicines you won’t recover , you’ll be dead within 10 years after infection if you are taking medication and decide to stop using it’ll drop fast and pretty sure you’ll be dead within 2 years , had a friend that tried that and sent him back to the hosp. but got it stable and they told her that you’ll die if you stop using , so it came to tell her it will eventually kill you
Hi Kegimoditswe,
What HIV meds are you taking? Could you make your question a bit clearer please?
is it possible to leave with fruits and vegetable?and using condoms everyday.without Rx
Hi Arome,
Please see the above post.
how long can someone leave without hiv drugs?
Hi Luis, Please see here for the ways in which HIV is not transmitted.