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.
for one month I could not access my meds I started having migraine. When I finally bought it online and started taking the meds I keep having migraine what do i do?
great publish, very informative. I’m wondering why the opposite specialists of this sector do not notice this.
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Hi Pretty, getting two lines means you now have to have a second laboratory test. Sometimes there are false-positive results from rapid HIV tests.
I’m pretty and am 22 year’s old.day before yesterday I went to the clinic and I found out that iam HIV positive as I saw 2 lines at the test after testing.so is it possible for the clinical test to show false results?
Hi Mark, how is your wife doing? If she has an undetectable viral load on treatment, this will make the risk to you close to zero.
http://i-base.info/qa-on-the-partner-study
You have just been lucky in staying negative so far.
My wife has HIV but I don’t have although she is place on drugs,beside we are having sex without condom for the four years now. Hope am not endangering my life?
Hi Tinashie, this is something to ask your doctor. It should be about the same. If an infant has HIV though they should be usually be taking treatment.
After how long or months does an infant with hiv (p), without treatments starts to walk and do other things that babies without hiv do?
If your wife is on effective treatment there is close to zero risk of transmission – see this link:
http://i-base.info/qa-on-the-partner-study
My wife has HIV but I don’t have although she is place on drugs,beside we are having sex without condom for the four years now. Hope am not endangering my life?