{"id":3313,"date":"2010-11-12T12:01:54","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T12:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/?p=3313"},"modified":"2010-11-12T12:01:54","modified_gmt":"2010-11-12T12:01:54","slug":"can-partying-explain-my-viral-load-increase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/3313","title":{"rendered":"Can partying explain my viral load increase?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hi<\/p>\n<p>Thanks for your question and the chance ot post the answer online.<\/p>\n<p>For your personal situation, first get the test confirmed. Laboratory errors, including wrong labeling or mixed samples can explain unexpected results. So the confirmed test will check this is your sample.<\/p>\n<p>Blips are defined differently. They are usually defined as increasing from less than 50 copies to over 200-300 copies\/mL. However, I have heard of blips over 2,000 copies\/mL that were undetectable on the next test.<\/p>\n<p>Recreational drug use should not have any direct influence on viral load, unless it affected your adherence, and you were late with or missed some of your meds. If you were adherent, and none of the reasons listed below are related, then the partying itself would not be an explanation.<\/p>\n<p>As long as adherence is good, it is very rare for someone whose viral load has been undetectable for over a year to have rebound in viral. In the UK this is less than 5% of people each year.<\/p>\n<p>Reasons for this include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Missing or being late with medication. Strict adherence is always important.<\/li>\n<li>Drug interactions with other medications. Does your doctor or HIV pharmacist know about all the drugs and medications you use?<\/li>\n<li>Poor drug absorption. Do you have other health problems. for example, diarrhoea.<\/li>\n<li>Other infections. Infections that activates the immune system, sometimes causes HIV viral load to increase &#8211; for example, flu, vaccinations, or some other sexually transmitted infections.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If the viral load is confirmed at a similar or higher level, your doctor will probably discuss the options for changing treatment. You should also have a resistance test whenever viral load is confirmed over 500-1000 copies\/mL when on treatment to inform this choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi<\/p>\n<p>I have been on medications for about 2 years. I am on atazanavir, ritonavir and truvada. I have been undetectable for about 1.8 years and my CD4 is 900, but a blood test taken last week returned a viral load 3,560.<\/p>\n<p>I have been called by my clinic this morning to come in for a new blood test which i did this afternoon. I had the impression that the nurse were worried and I am terrified now. I will have to wait another week to see if I ll be fine. They said that such a result can&#8217;t be a blip.<\/p>\n<p>How can a result of viral load 3,560 return to undetectable within 7 days?<\/p>\n<p>Do you think that because I have been partying and took some recreational drugs few days before my blood test, it could have affected my viral load?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,10,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-topics","category-cd4-and-viral-load","category-changing-treatment","category-resistance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3313","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}