Hi, how are you doing?<\/p>\n
It is great that your tests shows that you don’t have resistance to your treatment and your CD4 count is great.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately in some people it is not possible\/very difficult to achieve an undetectable viral load.<\/p>\n
Factors that increase this likelihood inc. being male, prior exposure to ART, earlier in treatment course, < 15 years old, low BMI being on Tb treatment.<\/p>\n
Of what has been mentioned the only factor that has increased your likelihood of not being able to obtain an undetectable viral load is you are still early in your treatment course.<\/p>\n
Around 20% of patients on first-line therapies after starting treatment can be seen to still have a viral load greater than 1000.<\/p>\n
In these cases it is important for other factors to be addressed in helping achieve an undetectable viral load e.g., improving nutrition, having a healthy BMI, assisting in adherence….<\/p>\n
How often are you having your viral load tested? When having difficulty achieving an undetectable viral load it should be measured every 3 months to assess for other factors that could be causing a problem.<\/p>\n
Josh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I started my treatment with Biktarvy in September 2022. My viral load was 1.6 million, and my CD4 count was 275 at the beginning. After one month, my CD4 count increased to 600, and the HIV RNA count decreased to 4300. At the end of 11 months, my CD4 count was around 800, but my HIV RNA count never dropped below 400 during this time. My viral load fluctuated between 400 and 1200, but my CD4 count remained consistently between 700 and 800.<\/p>\n
Upon noticing this, my doctor suspected that I might have developed resistance to the medication, and consequently, they changed my prescription to Prezista+Norvir+Tivicay. A resistance test was conducted, and no resistance was detected to Biktarvy or the new medications. However, after three months, my HIV RNA result is still in the 600 range, and I have not achieved an undetectable status. I seek assistance in understanding the possible reasons for this. Thank you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adherence","category-all-topics","category-starting-treatment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22575","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=22575"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22576,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22575\/revisions\/22576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}