{"id":1857,"date":"2024-11-01T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2024-11-01T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moomango.co.uk\/guides\/?page_id=1857"},"modified":"2024-11-22T22:31:52","modified_gmt":"2024-11-22T22:31:52","slug":"late-diagnosis","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/starting\/late-diagnosis","title":{"rendered":"Late diagnosis and low CD4s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In the UK \u2013 and many other countries \u2013 about 40% of all new diagnoses are made when the CD4 count is already less than 350.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>About 1 in 5 (20%) are diagnosed even later, with a CD4 count below 200.<\/p>\n<p>Reasons for not taking an HIV test earlier include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Not thinking you are not in a high risk group.<\/li>\n<li>Other fears about testing.<\/li>\n<li>Denial and thinking somehow you are protected: &#8220;it will never happen to me&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Fear of stigma and prejudice if the result is positive.<\/li>\n<li>Lack of up-to-date information about HIV and treatment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Being diagnosed late often means starting treatment on the same day that you first see an HIV doctor.<\/p>\n<p>If you have serious symptoms and are admitted to hospital, you might need other infections treated first. ART will be started shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n<p>Even with a very low CD4 count \u2013 even below 50 \u2013 if you take your drugs carefully, you have a good chance that ART will work. Your viral load will drop and your CD4 count will rise to safer levels.<\/p>\n<p>However, starting with a very low CD4 count can cause some infections to activate, such as TB. This is called Immune Reconstitution Inflammatory Syndrome (IRIS) and is serious, but usually easy to treat.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-15878\" src=\"https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/tabs.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"514\" height=\"137\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/tabs.png 514w, https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/tabs-300x80.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 514px) 100vw, 514px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the UK \u2013 and many other countries \u2013 about 40% of all new diagnoses are made when the CD4 count is already less than 350. About 1 in 5 (20%) are diagnosed even later, with a CD4 count below &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1547,"menu_order":29,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-guides.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1857","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1857"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17716,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1857\/revisions\/17716"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/guides\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}