Taking your HIV treatment

The word used to describe taking your treatment correctly is adherence. Taking your treatment properly involves taking the correct doses of your medicine, at the right time and in the right way. This means observing any instructions on food or drink and avoiding any interactions.

 

The best results of HIV treatment are seen in people who take all or nearly all their doses. The minimum level of adherence you should aim for is 95%. If you're taking your treatment once a day, that means missing or taking incorrectly no more than one dose a month. If you're taking your treatment twice a day, then 95% adherence means taking incorrectly no more than two or three doses a month.

 

Many people find such high levels of adherence difficult to achieve. Now Dutch researchers have found that people who don't see the need for HIV treatment are less likely to adhere to it than people who do.

Their research involved over 300 people taking HIV treatment accross the Netherlands. They found that people who didn't see the need to take HIV treatment were 60% more likely to have a detectable viral load than people who fully accepted their need to take anti-HIV drugs.

 

It's now recommended to start HIV treatment when your CD4 cell count is around 350. This is because starting treatment at this CD4 cell count has been shown to reduce the risk of HIV-related illness and other serious illnesses such as heart, liver and kidney disease compared to waiting until your CD4 cell count is lower.

 

 

This means that many people won't have any HIV-related symptoms at the time they start HIV treatment and this could mean that some people don't see the need to take this treatment.

 

The Dutch researchers who conducted the study recommend that "studies should investigate whether discussing the patients' view about their personal need for [HIV treatment] will lead to increased adherence."