Adherence to HIV treatment

Treatment with anti-HIV drugs can mean that you live a longer and healthier life. Some doctors are now optimistic that, thanks to such treatment, many patients with HIV will live a near-normal lifespan.

To get the most benefit from your treatment you need to take all (or nearly all) of your medicines at the right time and in the right way. Missing just a few doses a month can mean that your treatment doesn’t work properly.

Adherence is the word that’s used to describe taking your treatment properly. It’s the single most important factor under your control that increases the chances of your anti-HIV treatment working well.

HIV and pregnancy

Taking HIV treatment during pregnancy, having an appropriately managed delivery, and not breastfeeding can reduce the risk of mother-to-child transmission to very low levels. For women on combination therapy and with a viral load of less than 50 copies/ml the transmission rate from mother to baby is 0.1%.

Treatment side-effects

Like any other medicines, the drugs used to treat HIV can have unwanted secondary effects that are sometimes unpleasant or can make you unwell. These are usually called side-effects. Many will appear  soon after you start the treatment, and will lessen or disappear after a few weeks. 

Other side-effects may only appear after a number of months or even years of treatment with a drug, and these are called long-term side-effects. One of the main longer-term side-effects seen with two early anti-HIV drugs, d4T (stavudine, Zerit) and AZT (zidovudine, Retrovir, also in the combination pills Combivir and Trizivir ), is a syndrome of body-fat changes called lipodystrophy. Because of this side-effect, the use of these drugs is avoided as much as possible in the UK.