Question
Do I have a natural resistance to HIV?
11 July 2009. Related: All topics, CD4 and viral load.
I have estimated I have had HIV for about 8 years. I have been diagnosed with HIV for just over a month before I started medicines. My viral load was 12000. Does this mean my body has some sort of natural resistance to HIV?
Answer
Some people are called ‘slow progressors’, as they need treatment only after many years of being infected. This has to do more with the CD4 count, rather than with the viral load though.
Your viral load result does not indicate that you have any natural resistance to HIV. It is not something that has never happened before, on the contrary, it is common. There are two possible explanations about it:
1. Your immune system is fairly strong and it succeeds to supress better HIV for the time being.
2. The VL testing is prone to a threefold mistake. This means that if you have a VL of 30,000 the real value could very well be 10,000 or 90,000. That is why we always advise everybody to never make decisions based on a one-off reading. The important thing is the trend within a period of time.
Hope this helps.
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