{"id":4842,"date":"2011-10-09T20:02:01","date_gmt":"2011-10-09T20:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/?p=4842"},"modified":"2011-10-09T20:02:01","modified_gmt":"2011-10-09T20:02:01","slug":"can-i-know-when-i-was-infected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/4842","title":{"rendered":"Can I work out when I was infected from my CD4 count?"},"content":{"rendered":"

There really is no accurate way to know how long someone has been HIV positive.<\/p>\n

The best guess is based on your risk of exposure together with CD4 and viral load. However, one set of CD4 and viral load tests gives you no idea about which direction your counts were travelling in.<\/p>\n

One option is that this could be either recent (and you were diagnosed during a difficult seroconversion). This might mean that the next counts could improve without treatment.<\/p>\n

Another that you have been positive for a number of years and your results showed chronic infection – whether this was 3, 5, 8 or 10 or more years ago. A second set of blood test wold probably be worse, but with a CD4 count of 114, this isn;t something you would want to risk.<\/p>\n

If you remember a p0tential exposure, especially followed a few weeks later by a heavy flu, this would support that as the time of infection. But not everyone gets symptoms or can remember these.<\/p>\n

If you think this may have been less than 6 months ago a detuned HIV test can indicate an infection less than 6 months old.<\/p>\n

This test is sometimes only available in some research centres. It used to be called STARHS and is now referred to as RITA (Recent Infection Testing Algorithm)<\/a>. In the UK newly diagnosed people receive the result from this test, though it is not always reliable for individual cases.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure which i-Base article or diagram you referred to as there was not a link in your question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have recently been screened as HIV-1 positive. My CD4 count was 114 (11 %) and had a viral load of 1200000 on September 5, 2011. As I had herpes zoster this summer and very low CD4 count my therapist suggested that I might have been infected some 6 years ago. I immediately started ARV therapy: Kaletra (lopinavir 200mg + ritonavir 50 mg) 2*2 a day and combivir (lamivudin 150 mg + zidovudin 300 mg) 2*1 a day. After one month of treatment now my CD4 count was 236 (17 %). I developed no symptoms my lungs and organs are all okay.<\/p>\n

Is it possible that the extremely high load of virus means that my infection is a recent one or on the basis of the CD4 count it is really a six year one?<\/p>\n

On the basis of the diagram ( plotted in your issue here) on the expected increase of CD4 cells when starting treatment at 114 this is something of a good piece of news, as it should be this after one year. Does this increase mean anything?<\/p>\n

Thank you for your answer and thank you for being here.<\/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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-topics","category-cd4-and-viral-load"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4842","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=4842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}