Question

What happens if I stop taking treatment?

31 August 2016. Related: Adherence, All topics, Changing treatment, Side effects, South Africa, Stopping treatment.

What are the side effects if someone stops taking her medication for HIV?

Answer

Answer: Muirgen Stack

Thanks for your question.

May I ask why you are thinking of stopping? Many people find adhering hard at some in their lives but there are ways to make it easier. Likewise if you are suffering side effects – you can switch to meds that better suit you.

Several years ago a very large study called SMART reported that stopping treatment increased the risk of  serious complications. These included a higher risk for heart, liver and kidney complications in people who stopped treatment and also a higher rate of some cancers.

If you decide to stop treatment, your viral load is likely to rebound within a few weeks. If you stay off treatment your CD4 count will start to drop over the next few months. When this happens the risk of developing other infections and getting sick increases.

How quickly this will happen though varies a lot. The lower your CD4 count was when you started meds, the quicker your CD4 is likely to fall without ART.

In the SMART study, most people who took a treatment break did pretty well for a short time. However, most people were not able to recover their CD4 count to earlier levels even 18 months after they restarted treatment.

Please talk to your doctor about who you feel. It is not generally good to stop treatment. It is definitely not good to do this without first talking to your doctor.

Please let me know if you have any other questions.