Hi<\/p>\n
Without more information (whether she was ill before treatment, which treatment she is using etc) it is difficult to answer your questions, but there are four general possibilities:<\/p>\n
1. If she had symptoms before starting treatment, then this is probably related to HIV.<\/p>\n
2. That these are general side effects from starting treatment – fatigue and weakness – feeling tired etc often occur in the first few weeks until your body get used to medication. These are generally mild though and if your girlfriends is feeling work each day then this is likely to be more serious.<\/p>\n
3. That it is a side effect of both HIV drugs or preventative treatment like cotrimoxazole (to protect against PCP with low CD4 counts) – but you didn’t say which drugs she is taking. A few rare side effects can be very serious and so her doctor should be checking for these – ie liver toxicity with nevirapine or a hypersensitivity reaction, or lactic acidosis with d4T<\/p>\n
4. That starting treatment generated an immune response that prompted an underlying infection to become active, called Immune Reconstitution Syndrome (IRS) or Immune Reconstitution Inflammatory Syndrome (IRIS). This is often TB but can be any opportunistic infection (PCP, CMV, MAI, hepatitis etc). It is not uncommon in people starting treatment with a low CD4 count (it occurs in perhaps up to 25% people) but has to be taken very seriously by her doctor.<\/p>\n
Ask the doctor which of these four options is going on and check he is aware of these and similar resources.<\/p>\n
Finally, you emails all come via the website and because you don’t include your email address I can’t contact you more quickly directly. Even when you include your email address to me, this will never be public on the website.<\/p>\n
Please email me<\/a> privately if you have other direct questions. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hi<\/p>\n My girlfriend has recently started HAART, she complains often of feeling very weak.<\/p>\n She is eating well and is otherwise well. Recent blood tests, CT-scan of the head, ultrasound of the abdomen and x-ray chest are all normal. Why is this happening?<\/p>\n Is this a reaction to her medication or due to progression of the disease? her CD4 count was 101 recently.<\/p>\n She is unable to work due to her weakness. She is also having tremors whenever she makes an effort to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,38,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-topics","category-side-effects","category-starting-treatment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}