Hi<\/p>\n
Your CD4 count is still very strong, so you have time and the choice to start treatment whenever you want to do this.<\/p>\n
A ‘normal’ CD4 count is sometimes referred to as 500 cells\/mm3, and this is a target CD4 count for someone on treatment, so you are already above this level.<\/p>\n
Starting treatment now will keep your CD4 count above this level. If you end up starting at a slightly lower level, the treatment will still get you above 500 and is likely to keep you there.<\/p>\n
The UK guidelines also include starting treatment at any CD4 count if you are older than 50.<\/p>\n
Immune counts drops slowly with each decade we age over 50, but it is unclear whether this directly affects your health if you are HIV-negative.<\/p>\n
Still, keeping your count as high as possible will help into the future.<\/p>\n
Treatment works just as effectively in older people.<\/p>\n
Some studies have reported that it might work slightly better.<\/p>\n
This may be due to social factors (better adherence) or physical factors (because your body may eliminate drugs slightly slower, making treatment slightly more potent), or a combination of both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m 54 and treatment naive.<\/p>\n
My last numbers were CD4 550, CD4% 29 and VL 10,000.<\/p>\n
I want to start treatment before my CD4 drops below 500.<\/p>\n
My question is now that I am in my 50’s will the medication work effectively for me and so long as I am adherant will it maintain a healthy CD4 level in the years to come?<\/p>\n
I read somewhere that the older you get with HIV the CD4 level starts to drop irrespective of the medication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,9,39,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-topics","category-cd4-and-viral-load","category-starting-treatment","category-support"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3318","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=3318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}