{"id":959,"date":"2009-12-05T12:39:36","date_gmt":"2009-12-05T12:39:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.i-base.info\/qa\/?p=959"},"modified":"2021-11-22T12:17:12","modified_gmt":"2021-11-22T12:17:12","slug":"my-cd4-is-347-do-i-need-to-start-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/959","title":{"rendered":"My CD4 is 347&#8230; do I need to start treatment?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Thanks for your question and the chance to post the answer online.<\/p>\n<p>There are many good reasons for you to monitor you counts every month for a little longer.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> to see whether any changes are happening.<\/li>\n<li> if you were only infected recently (within the last 6 months), your CD4 count may increase again by iteslf.<\/li>\n<li> any risk from not starting treatment immediately are very low<\/li>\n<li> it will give you time to come to terms with being HIV-positive<\/li>\n<li> it will give to time to consider treatment options in more detail<\/li>\n<li> there are no real difference from starting treatment a bit higher or lower than 350<\/li>\n<li> starting treatment at any level above 300 will still get you to over 500, which which is currently used as a guide for reaching &#8216;normal&#8217; levels.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The decision of when to start has to be individual, based on your own risks and benefits, and how you feel about changing treatment. As long as you have no other symptoms, your CD4 count is currently strong enough for at least couple of months, not to have any long-term impact on your health.<\/p>\n<p>Although generally low CD4 counts are associated with higher viral load and vice versa, there are many situations where this doesn&#8217;t always follow, for different reasons. For example, your current CD4 count is still strong. You could be one of the 5% of people whose natural CD4 count is less than 500 &#8211; ie that it would have been under 500 before you caught HIV. In this case, the low viral load indicates not just that you are controlling HIV very well, but that it hasn&#8217;t affected your normal CD4 levels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi there<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d just like to first say this website has been really helpful.<\/p>\n<p>I was recently diagnosed a few weeks ago: my first CD4 count was 312 and viral load was 1500, which I gather is reasonably low. My second CD4 count as of last week was 347.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m meeting my doctor to discuss starting medication as my CD4 count is less than 350.  But what I don&#8217;t understand is, how can my viral count be so low too?  I thought it tended to be CD4 low\/high viral load, and vice versa. Surely my viral load should be higher, or does this indicate I have been carrying HIV for quite some time?<\/p>\n<p>I ask because I am a bit upset that I will have to start medication so soon after initial diagnosis, as I thought perhaps I&#8217;d have a few years before starting treatment (obviously would rather start treatment if it is recommended!).<\/p>\n<p>Should I hold off another month &#8211; has my CD4 count just &#8216;dipped&#8217; following infection..?<\/p>\n<p>Any thoughts appreciated!<\/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-959","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\/959","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=959"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/959\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=959"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=959"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/qa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=959"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}