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.
My partner has been under ARVs for almost 5 years. Recently she stopped taking meds almost 4 months and restarted taking the same dose. She had no side effects nor complications at all. The sad story is that she didn’t consult the doctor as nowadays here in Kenya all laboratories are concentrating to Covid-19. What are the risks? The reason of stopping was simply voluntary as taking a pause after almost 5 years. Please advise
Hi Keabetswe,
I’m sorry to hear you’ve stopped your HIV treatment. Was that because there was a stock out? Or maybe you had side effects that were too much.
But please let us know why you had to stop. Please let us know what the HIV meds are. And if you have access to your CD4 count and viral load results, please tell us what they are.
If you live in South Africa you can contact the Treatment Action Campaign at this contact link. They can help with local support.
I have HIV for three months now I only took the treatment for a two months and stopped what will happen to me
Hi Ph,
What ARVs are you taking? How long have you been on them for? If you haven’t yet red our into to ARVs guide, you may find this helpful: http://i-base.info/guides/side
Hi i was diagnose with HIV positive and having trouble with side effects. I always feel sick like vomiting every morning. Or sometimes when i want to take a nap i feel palpitation on my heartbeat. Im taking ARV every night. And also im maintaining cotrimoxazole once a day and azithromycin every saturday. Is this Okey??
My art finished on the 7th of April and we are not allowed outside the gate for till 30 April what damage will i do to my body i love my health and my job as well we are on lock down
Hi Precious,
If you don’t take any ARVs for three weeks, your viral load will rebound. What this means is that your HIV will no longer be under control and if you were to have unprotected sex there’d be a risk of transmission. Even if you’re in another province you should be able to get some ARVs. However in you’re in South Africa the best org to get in touch with are the following: https://tac.org.za/
Even if for some reason you can’t access meds for another few weeks, you’ll be OK. You will however need to tell your doctor that you didn’t take any med for 2-3 weeks. If possible they should do a viral load test as possible a CD4 test. You should be able to use the same meds, however you may need to change to another combination. Again, this is something that you’ll need to talk to your doctor about.
Once you do restart meds, your viral load will go down again.
Hi Edie,
Do you mean you stopped ART nearly 14 months ago? However, these results look good. Especially as you’ve not been on ART.
What does your doctor say about the results? Please let us know more.
l find it confusing as l’ve tested my viral load after leaving ART treatment for nearly 14 months and it was less than 20/ ml and my CD4 was almost 700. What could be the reason for that please help
Hi Sibongile,
No you won’t get sick. However if you miss a weeks worth of meds it’s very possible that your viral load will rebound. If you contact the following org, they should be able to tell you how and where you can access some emergency meds: https://tac.org.za/