Hello<\/p>\n
Thank you for your question.<\/p>\n
Looking at your most recent results especially the CD4 count, you would need to be on treatment. The current global treatment guidelines indicate that people living with HIV should start treatment when they get to a CD4 count of 350.<\/p>\n
As your CD4 count is now under 200, it is important to start treatment. It is the low CD4 count that puts you at risk of being ill.<\/p>\n
Knowing that the most important function of treatment is to suppress your viral load to undetectable levels, your most current viral load results (if true) suggest that you are already achieving this.<\/p>\n
You could also ask for your CD4 percentage results from your current clinic. The results of the CD4 percentage may give additional information on how you are doing. If you can afford it, going to another diagnostic centre and having both the CD4 count and viral load tests done would confirm if these are accurate results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was diagnosed HIV positive in March 2009 with a CD4 count of 720, and a viral load of 84,000. The doctor said that I did not need treatment at the time. But today now my CD4 count is 130 and the viral load is undetectable. Should I start treatment with this CD4 count and undectable viral load or should I get a second opinion and repeat both tests at another diagnostic centre?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-topics","category-cd4-and-viral-load","category-starting-treatment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}