Question
Should I start treatment with CD4 count of 500? What is the best food?
11 November 2011. Related: All topics, Life expectancy, Living with HIV long-term, Starting treatment.
I am a 35 year old man and was recently diagnosed HIV positive. My CD4 is approximately 500. When should i start treatment and what healthy food should I eat. Please can you help and guide me.
Can I live more than 5 years?
Answer
When to start treatment depends on many things.
This includes your CD4 count but also your current health and your reasons for wanting to start.
In general, the UK still uses a CD4 count of 350 for deciding when to start, but the USA and some other countries recommend starting earlier, when the CD4 count fall below 500 or even earlier.
Before choosing your combination, ask for information about each of the drugs you might take. Ask about the likelihood of side effects and also the percentage of people had side effects related to each drug and how serious they were. Ask about the advantages and disadvantages for each one of the drugs. Being on medication will reduce your viral load and your main aim is to get it to an ‘undectable’ level.
You also need to be aware about adherence. Adherence is a word to describe taking your drugs exactly as prescribe. This means taking them at the right time, every time and also to follow any special diet restriction (for example with or without food). Diet restrictions are very important. Ignoring these can be like only taking half a dose. You will not absorb enough of the drug for it to work properly.
Do not miss or taking your dosage late because this will affect drug level in your system. The drug has to be kept at enough level to keep HIV under control, all the time. If it drops below the minimal level, then the virus can start to replicate again. If this were to happen,you can develop resistant virus and your treatment might stop working. If you take your medication correctly and consistently you should not experience HIV-related illnesses in the future.
How long anyone lives depends on things you can change (smoking, exercise, medication) and thing you can’t (genetics and luck). A study in Denmark (2005) has estimated that the survival is more than 35 years for a young person diagnosed with HIV infection and another study in Canada (2003) has shown that in the US, life expectancy at age 20 years was 58.3 years.
Being HIV positive doesn’t mean you have to change your diet. However, eating a healthy balanced diets is good advice for everyone. This link has more information about eating a balanced diet.
The ‘Introduction to combination therapy‘ is a good guide for someone starting treatment. Please let us know if you have other questions.
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