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Ency. home > Disease > H > HIV infection

HIV infection    See images

Overview | Symptoms | Treatment | Prevention

Alternative names:

Human immunodeficiency virus infection; AIDS

Treatment

Drug therapy is often recommended for patients who are committed to taking all their medications and have a CD4 count less than 500 (indicating immune system suppression) or a high viral load (amount of HIV virus in the bloodstream).

It is extremely important that patients take all doses of their medications, otherwise the virus will rapidly become resistant to the medications. Therapy is always given with a combination of antiviral drugs.

People with HIV infection need to receive education about the disease and treatment so that they can be active partners in decision making with their health care provider.

Prognosis

HIV is a chronic medical condition that can be treated, but not yet cured. There are effective means of preventing complications and delaying, but not preventing, progression to AIDS. At the present time, not all persons infected with HIV have progressed to AIDS, but time has shown that the vast majority do.

Complications

Call Your Health Care Provider If:

Call for an appointment with your health care provider if you have had a possible or actual exposure to AIDS or HIV infection.

Ency. home > Disease > H > HIV infection

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