Hi, how are you doing?<\/p>\n
It is great to hear that you were able to start medication the same day as your diagnosis, more so that you became undetectable so quickly. By quickly having your viral load suppressed this is what has allowed your CD4 count to recover. An increase of 150 over 3 months is very encouraging.<\/p>\n
After 10 years there is some reasoning for your viral load to be low. There is an inital spike in viral load in the first few months after transmission. This is often higher than 100000 copies. When this high your body is able to mount an immune response to and slowly bring this value down. Over time this value can increase but at a slower rate.<\/p>\n
In your case it is possible you are a ‘long-term slow progressor (LTSP)’. This is someone who naturally is able to suppress HIV with little impact on their immune system. The viral load increases but at a much slower rate to someone who is not a LTSP. These cases are rare and is likely why your specialists were surprised.<\/p>\n
What further supports this, as you have mentioned is testing positive for HLA-B27. This is a type of gene variation that has an association with being a LTSP. The variation alters your immune system and helps you mount a stronger immune system that most people. The major finding being that in general around 4% of HIV positive people have this gene. Of those who can be identified as LTSP, almost 80% do.<\/p>\n
It is good that your treatment was switched so soon after identifying problems with your kidneys. How are you doing on Dovato? It is encouraging that your BP and HR have returned to what they were.<\/p>\n
Yes there is a chance that your kidney function will return to normal. It is difficult to comment as you have said your doctor has described your kidney function as borderline which is an ambiguous term. Though you should expect improvement after being taken off the drug that was causing problems.<\/p>\n
Josh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I\u2019m a (soon to be) 40yr old male. I was diagnosed as living with HIV in May 2023, which came as somewhat of a shock, as I\u2019ve been with my husband for 10 years at the point of diagnosis. Neither of us have been unfaithful during that time and my last HIV test was about 4 months before we met which was negative. So I\u2019ve had it for about 10 years.
\nWhen I was diagnosed my Viral Load was 9020 and my CD4 was 324. I started medication the same day. I quickly became undetectable (between 4-6 weeks) and after 3 months my CD4 had gone up to 474, which I\u2019m pleased about.<\/p>\n
My question is why my viral load was relatively low after having it for so long and given my CD4 count at the time, I was expecting my VL to be quite a bit higher. A couple of specialists I spoke with at my appointments were surprised it was as low as it was and couldn\u2019t give an answer.<\/p>\n
I also have a gene called HLA-B27. Would this have helped with controlling the virus? I\u2019ve had a look on the Internet and any information I\u2019ve found is either old or too technical for me to understand.<\/p>\n
When I was first diagnosed in May I was put on a triple combination therapy and in October I was switched to Dovato (double combination). Whilst on the triple combination my kidney function started to slowly decrease, my blood pressure increased quite markedly and my heart rate increased. Within a couple of days of switching to Dovato my heart rate and blood pressure returned to normal. I had a follow up blood test in November and my VL remained undetectable. I have a follow up appointment in January and they\u2019ll be doing my full bloods again.
\nIs there a chance my kidney function will have increased since switching? It might be worth noting that a month before being diagnosed I had bloods taken by my GP and unbeknown to me my kidney function was borderline (not sure what they meant by borderline) and a re test by my GP recently returned as \u2018Satisfactory\u2019.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,10,28,53,38,39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-topics","category-cd4-and-viral-load","category-changing-treatment","category-newly-diagnosed","category-research","category-side-effects","category-starting-treatment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22689","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=22689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22690,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22689\/revisions\/22690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}