HI, how are you?<\/p>\n
It is very rare to be an elite controller. For this reason, research surrounding why some people suppress HIV and maintain CD4 counts is not well understood.<\/p>\n
For this same reason, it cannot be determined if being an elite controller is life long or not. It is likely that a number of personal factors (genetic and lifestyle) will impact on how your body responds to HIV. This is also what is going to impact your status as an elite controller.<\/p>\n
It is possible that some people may remain an elite controller for their entire lives. But this is not always the case for everybody.<\/p>\n
As your CD4 count is now falling, it is suggestive that HIV is starting to impact your immune system. Starting treatment, will prevent this from happening to a greater degree and continue to keep you healthy.<\/p>\n
Josh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I tested positive in 1992 and shortly after was considered an elite controller since my viral load was undetectable and my t-cell count was actually above 800 for several years. In 2011, it was suggested that I start meds because my t-cell count was dropping but I remained undetectable. My question is how long does an elite controller remain an elite controller? Is this something that lasts the life of the person?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adherence","category-all-topics","category-cd4-and-viral-load"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20102","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\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}