Thank you for your question.<\/p>\n
Once you decide upon the right time for you to take your medication then the closer to this time you take your medication the better. There is a window of about an hour either side of this time for you to take your HIV medication. 12 hours late on occasions will do you no harm but if you are consistently taking your medication this late it is not good. The more frequently you skip doses or take tablets late, the more likely you are to get resistance to the medication.<\/p>\n
For further information on the timing of taking your HIV medication please see this similar question<\/a>. For information on adherence<\/a> and resistance<\/a> see these sections in the i-Base \u2018Introduction to Combination Therapy\u2019<\/a> guide.<\/p>\n To answer your second question, there was a study done called 5-days on 2-days off (FOTO) which looked into intermittent therapy as an option for people already stable on HIV medication.<\/p>\n This study was only with a very small amount of people and so was too small to know the risk of treatment failure or resistance in the long-term. However it was significant that none of the participants had viral load blips or rebounds over a year. The study also did not show any benefit with regards to a reduction in side effects of taking the drugs. The main benefit of FOTO would be financial, as it has the potential to reduce drug costs.<\/p>\n For details of the FOTO study see\u00a0this link to the study abstract<\/a>\u00a0at the IAS 2009 conference,<\/p>\n