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.
Hello Paul and thank you for sharing your experience and feelings with us.
I am very sorry for your loss. Our thoughts are with you in this difficult time.
How are you coping? Is there something we can help with?
My partner stopped taking his medications when he lost his insurance. Within a few years he became sick. He died on a ventilator of pneumonia. It was 4 months ago; I am heartbroken.
Hi Eddie, thanks. What is your latest CD4 and viral load results. Continuing to be monitored is really important. Although you feel well, your immune system might be steadily getting weaker even though you feel fine. You would then be at risk of very serious infections.
The monitoring might also show that your immune system is able to stay strong without meds, but this is so rare that you need the monitoring to know either way. Most people, including myself, recognise that HIV meds are the only way to guarantee keeping ahigh CD4 count over many years and even over decades.
Please check with your doctor as the risk of not monitoring yourself when not taking ART is very risky and serious.
I am hiv positive since 2011, I don’t take meds for almost 10 year, and I live a totally normal healthy life
Dear Anon, what did your clinic and doctor say before about the nausea and feeling sick. There are much safer options that might be as simple as taking meds with a little food. If these are the same meds that you started in 2015, there are also new and better meds that don’t cause sickness.
In 2015, your meds probably included a drug called efavirenz that was difficult to take.
In 2024, please ask about a combination called TLD based on a drug called dolutegravir.
This is now much easier.
Stopping meds will casue your viral load to rebound and your CD4 count to drop, probably to the levels these were in 2015. It is much safer to be on treatment, but it just means trying a treatment that is much easier for you to take.
Please let us know how you feel about this :)
Hi I’m HIV positive and I’ve been on my medication since 2015 and this year I’ve stopped taking my medication because every time I take them I feel nauseated and sick so I decided stop them since May this year, what are the risks?
Hi Kelly, i-Base only provides information. Please contact a doctor or health centre to register for care.
Hi am HIV can u help me please. I don’t go to health center
Hi Borah, I am, sorry that I don’t understand your post. Why are you stopping HIV meds? Is this because you can’t get treatment. i-Base does not have a way to supply HIV meds. Are you able to speak to a doctor about this.
Hey I have HiV and I’m not continuing my medicine. Can I get medicine here?