Hi,<\/p>\n
A viral load result tell you how much virus is in your blood.<\/p>\n
Results are usually shown\u00a0as copies per millilitre (copies\/mL or c\/mL).<\/p>\n
The main\u00a0aim of HIV treatment is for this to become ‘undetectable’. This does not mean that there is no HIV left in your body. It means that viral load can’t be detected using\u00a0normal tests.<\/p>\n
Viral load test have different cut-off levels. For example, some at sensitive to 500, 200, 50 or 20 copies\/mL.<\/p>\n
In the UK, monitoring HIV treatment (ART)<\/strong> is based on a viral load being undetectable at less\u00a0than 50 copies\/mL<\/strong>.<\/p>\n In term of risk of sexual transmission<\/strong>, undetectable refers to having a viral load that is less than 200 copies\/mL<\/strong><\/p>\n After starting ART, viral load usually becomes undetectable within 1-3 months, depending on the meds used. If you start with a high viral load it can sometimes take a little longer.<\/p>\n Having an undetectable viral load shows that your treatment is working.<\/p>\n It also means that you can no longer pass HIV on to sexual partners. The risk of this happening with an undetectable viral load is zero.<\/p>\n This Q&A was updated in May 2021 from an answer first published in December 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What does undetectable viral load mean?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-topics","category-cd4-and-viral-load","category-hiv-transmission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25104,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10953\/revisions\/25104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}