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Why monitor?
There are two key tests that doctors use to assess how HIV is affecting your body.
The CD4 cell count is a guide to how strong your immune system is. The viral load test measures the amount of HIV in your blood.
Regular monitoring of CD4 cell count and HIV viral load provide a good indication of the effects of HIV on your body. Doctors can interpret your test results in the context of what they know about the course of HIV disease progression.
For example, your risk of developing opportunistic infections is directly related to your CD4 cell count - PCP pneumonia rarely occurs in people whose CD4 cell count is above 200 - 250. The level of your viral load predicts how rapidly your CD4 cell count is likely to fall. When looked at together, these two results can be used to predict your risk of developing AIDS in the next few years. For example, if your HIV viral load is above 55,000 and your CD4 cell count below 200, then there’s an 85% chance that you’ll develop AIDS in the next three years. This is illustrated in the table on the next page.
Results from your CD4 cell count and viral load tests can help you and your doctor make decisions about when to take HIV treatments, or therapy to help prevent you from developing opportunistic infections.
There are different testing methods used to measure viral load. When your viral load is first tested, ask the doctor which method was being used. Was it:
- Roche Amplicor Ultrasensitive HIV-1 monitor
or
- Chiron Quantiplex b-DNA version 3.0.