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HIV therapy

Michael Carter

The British HIV Association (BHIVA) is the UK’s professional body for doctors who care for people with HIV and AIDS. BHIVA produces guidelines on how the medical care of people with HIV should be managed. Recently, BHIVA has agreed revised practice guidelines for 2008 on the use of drugs to treat HIV infection.

This booklet has been written to help you decide what questions to ask your doctor about any course of treatment you might be considering. It is not intended to replace discussion with your doctor about treatment.

HIV therapy is also available online in Czech, German, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish and Turkish.

  • BHIVA HIV treatment guidelines

    This booklet is a summary of the BHIVA HIV treatment guidelines: a set of recommendations about how anti-HIV therapy should be used to treat people...

  • What is HIV therapy?

    Drugs given to treat HIV are also called antiretrovirals. To ensure that antiretrovirals have a powerful and long-lasting effect against HIV, it is necessary to...

  • When should HIV therapy be started?

    There is no clear evidence on when is the best time for you to start taking anti-HIV drugs. This means that you must weight up...

  • What to start therapy with

    Standard anti-HIV treatment for people who are taking it for the first time will involve a combination, or "regimen," of three antiretrovirals. ...

  • When to change therapy

    The goal of anti-HIV treatment is an undetectable viral load (below 50 copies/ml of blood in the tests used in most HIV clinics). If your...

  • Taking your treatment

    The success of your anti-HIV drugs requires a very high level of dedication from you. Adherence is the term used to describe taking your HIV...

  • Summary

    People with HIV always require individualised care. Currently available HIV therapy does not eliminate HIV from your body. If your CD4 cell count is around 350, or...

This content was checked for accuracy at the time it was written. It may have been superseded by more recent developments. NAM recommends checking whether this is the most current information when making decisions that may affect your health.