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How treatment works

Roger Pebody
Published: 17 February 2012

HIV treatment helps you stay well by reducing the amount of HIV in your body. All anti-HIV drugs try to prevent HIV infecting new cells, but different types of drugs do this in different ways. A combination of two different types of drugs provides a powerful attack on HIV.

The aim of treatment is an ‘undetectable viral load’ – very low levels of HIV in the blood.

Click here to see our illustrated leaflet showing how different types of anti-HIV drugs work against HIV.

This leaflet is also available in Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Somali, Spanish, Swedish, Thai and Turkish.

Our information levels explained

  • Short and simple introductions to key HIV topics, sometimes illustrated with pictures.
  • Expands on the previous level, but also written in easy-to-understand plain language.
  • More detailed information, likely to include medical and scientific language.
  • Detailed, comprehensive information, using medical and specialised language.
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 It may have been superseded by more recent developments.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.