{"id":4573,"date":"2011-08-26T13:19:50","date_gmt":"2011-08-26T13:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/?p=4573"},"modified":"2011-08-26T13:19:50","modified_gmt":"2011-08-26T13:19:50","slug":"what-does-a-cd4-count-of-42-mean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/4573","title":{"rendered":"What does a CD4 count of 42 mean?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks for your question.<\/p>\n<p>I hope you are finding life easier as you get used to HIV. Getting a diagnosis is difficult but it is good that you are now on treatment.<\/p>\n<p>Your CD4 count is a marker of how strong your immune system is, and 42 is pretty low. This means that you are still at risk of HIV-related symptoms until it gets higher because of your ARV treatment.<\/p>\n<p>I am assuming that your CD4 count was lower when you were diagnosed. When starting treatment at a CD4 count below 50, it can take a year to reach 100 and another year perhaps to reach 200.<\/p>\n<p>During this time the risk of infections is lower than if you were not on treatment but until you get to 200 you should also be prescribed an antibiotic called Septrin.<\/p>\n<p>Also, while your CD4 count is below 50, your doctor should examine your eyes to check you do not have vision problems relating to an infection called CMV.<\/p>\n<p>If your CD4 count has not gone up over the last year, then you should ask your doctor to explain these results in case alternative treatments could be used.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a couple of links to infromation about CD4 counts.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i-base.info\/ttfa\/section-1\/17-cd4-count-as-a-surrogate-marker\">https:\/\/i-base.info\/ttfa\/section-1\/17-cd4-count-as-a-surrogate-marker<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i-base.info\/ttfa\/section-1\/19-interpreting-cd4-results-cd4-count-and-cd4-percentage\">https:\/\/i-base.info\/ttfa\/section-1\/19-interpreting-cd4-results-cd4-count-and-cd4-percentage<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I found that i was positive a year back, i am on art and my cd4 count is 42. What does this suggest?<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4573","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\/4573","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=4573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4573\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}