{"id":126,"date":"2007-06-14T01:25:18","date_gmt":"2007-06-14T00:25:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.i-base.info\/qa\/?p=126"},"modified":"2021-11-22T12:19:02","modified_gmt":"2021-11-22T12:19:02","slug":"what-does-a-viral-load-of-28-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/126","title":{"rendered":"What does a viral load of 2.8 mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A viral load of log 2.8 = a viral load of about 650 copies\/mL.<\/p>\n<p>You are right that viral load results are usually given as larger numbers &#8211; and can be anywhere from 50 copies\/mL to over 1,000,000 copies\/mL.<\/p>\n<p>Another way of expressing numbers that have a large range though is to use a log scale. This is where the actual number is expressed as a factor of 10.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1 log = 10<\/li>\n<li>2 logs = 10&#215;10 = 100<\/li>\n<li>3 logs = 10x10x10 = 1,000<\/li>\n<li>etc<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Another way to remember the conversion is that the number of &#8216;zeros&#8217;s is the same as the log number: 5 logs is 1 with 5 zeros, or 100,000.<\/p>\n<p>For log numbers in between whole numbers:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>1.3 logs = approximately 20  copies\/mL<\/li>\n<li>1.5 logs = approximately 32<\/li>\n<li>1.7 logs = approximately 50<\/li>\n<li>2.7 logs = approximately 500<\/li>\n<li>4.7 logs = approximately 50,000<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We&#8217;ll add a conversion table to the i-Base website over the next week or so, with a link to this question, so it is easy to check again in the future.<\/p>\n<p>One of the ways that &#8216;logs&#8217; make life easier, is that guidelines recommend that when you start treatment your viral load should drop by at least 1 log within 4 weeks. This gives a simple target for people who could be starting at very different viral loads &#8211; eg 20,000 copies\/mL or 500,000 copies\/mL.<\/p>\n<p>If you have just started treatment, you will be aiming to get your viral load to under 50 copies\/mL &#8211; or below 1.7 logs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have been given my viral load &#8211; it has been expressed as 2.8.<\/p>\n<p>What does this mean?  I thought viral loads were expressed in the 10,000 and 1000,000 etc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-topics","category-cd4-and-viral-load"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126","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=126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}