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.
Hi David, it is good that you are concerned about your granddaughter but without more information it is difficult to comment. Some of tje older drugs can cause tiredness but more recent drugs are much better. If she has been on the same meds for a long time, newer meds might be available now. Also, some HIV meds, even newer ones like dolutegravir, can interrupt good sleep. Dolutegravir is better taken in the morning.
Does your granddaughter have an undetectable viral load? This is also very important. If it is detectable, then HIV might be causing other problems.
Also, as a caution, you might not be being fair to your granddaughter by judging her as being lazy.
If you had health problems, and were taking meds that affected your sleep, you would also be tired and not have much energy. That would make you less active but it wouldn’t mean you were lazy, just tired and not getting enough proper rest at night.
My granddaughter of 12 years has been on HIV drugs for about 11 years. She’s very forgetful and lazy at doing things. She’s always looking tired. Are these signs some effect of the effects of the HIV drugs? If it is what should we do?
Hi Pretty, thanks – and great you have been on ART for so long. In general, once you are stable on ART, new side effects are unlikely. It is more likely that recent tiredness is linked to other things in your life, including something as simple as not sleeping so well Your doct can look at other reasons too depending on how extreme the tiredness is.
Hi..I am HiV positive for almost 15 years now and I am on treatment…I am OK but I forgot things or feel tied most of time is because of this long term treatment?