Q and A

Question

What happens if I stop taking 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.

395 comments

  1. Rav

    Hi,
    I am Rav
    I have commented that I have been diagnosed with HIV for last 3 months. I started the ART from 31 st of July to until now. On that time my CD4 count was 686 and CD8 count was more than 700 as I think. But I couldn’t find to know about my viral load before starting the ART yesterday I talked to the clinic and asked about my first viral load then they said my first viral load which is before to start the ART is 3858. Now I have been started art from last July 31 st 2020 and continuing until now. Can I know is my viral load is now in the stage of undetectable or not ? Because I it has been 4 months to this November 31st.
    Any suggestions about my first viral load

  2. Roy Trevelion

    Hi Rav,

    I’m sorry to hear about your recent diagnosis. But it’s great that you’ve been taking HIV treatment (ART) since July.

    Please see this page from ART in Pictures. It shows how viral load can drop by 90% within the first few days, and by 99% within the first few weeks.

    Viral load then continues to drop over the next few months. A CD4 count of 686 is within the normal range for someone who is HIV negative.

    Please let us know what ARVs you’re taking and what your next viral load results are.

  3. Rav

    Hi,
    I am Rav.
    I has been diagnosed with HiV positive for last three months. I have started my arv on July 31, 2020 on that time my first CD4 cell count was 686. And as I think CD8 cell count was more than 700. Now I need to know what will be the my viral load for above CD4 cells ?
    Please suggest me.

  4. Lisa Thorley

    Hi Manqamzanah,

    If you’re having issues with your medication and you’re losing weight, you’re going to need to talk to your doctor. You may need to be given a different combination of ARVs.

  5. Manqamzanah

    Hi
    I know wat I did I totally wrong I was taking mi treatment then I stop taking em now am getting sick , after taking em I will vomit for the whole day an now am feeling sorry for mi self coz am also losing weight. What I want to know would I be oky or nop.

  6. Lisa Thorley

    Hi Lerato,

    Can I just clarify, are you saying that you’ve stopped taking ARVs because you’ve been diagnosed with TB? If this is the case, then there’s no need to stop taking ARVs. You can take both ARVs and TB medication at the same time.

    If you’ve stopped taking ARVs you risk developing resistance, your HIV will no longer be under control.

  7. Lerato

    I’m HIV positive a take a medication for 6month after the find out a had a TB the stop medication

  8. Roy Trevelion

    Hi Thulile,

    It’s great that your brother has started HIV treatment again.

    However, it’s important that he sees his doctor so that his symtoms can be looked at. This is important because this could be a bad reaction to the new ARVs. He may need to change to other HIV meds quickly.

  9. Thulile

    My brother started on arvs 2018 and he stopped taking it for 10 months and he started getting sick again,he went back to the clinic they gave him treatment again after a week he started to feel sick red eyes and rash or blisters on face what to do

  10. Lisa Thorley

    Hi Tamba J,

    It’s great to hear that you want to restart medication. With regards to restarting, yes this is something that you can do. You should be OK to go back to the meds that you were using for those 8 days, however it’s best to discuss this with your doctor. Depending on how long you missed taking your meds for, they may wish to do a CD4 count test as well as viral load. There will be options, and yes you can take meds again.

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