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Summary
| Last updated: 04.08.05 |
- People with HIV always require individualised care.
- Currently available HIV therapy does not eliminate HIV from your body.
- There is no clear evidence for the best time to start taking anti-HIV therapy. Decisions need to be taken with your doctor on an individual basis.
- If you are ill because of HIV, or have a low CD4 count, you are advised to take treatments.
- It is unclear which is the best combination to start with, but it is currently recommended that if you are starting HIV therapy for the first time, you take a combination of two NRTIs and an NNRTI or two NRTIs and a "boosted" protease inhibitor.
- HIV therapy which is not suppressing viral load to undetectable levels should be changed if there are other drugs available which seem likely to achieve this.
- Special treatment strategies are needed if you have taken lots of different HIV drugs.
- To work, HIV drugs have to be taken properly. This is more likely to happen if you have taken part in decisions about your treatment and are supported in, and committed to, taking it.
- Your sex and ethnic origins can have implications for your choice of HIV therapy and your risk of certain side-effects.