Treatment

Doctors fight HIV using drugs called anti-retrovirals. These stop HIV from attacking T cells, so it can’t make clones! This gives your immune system a chance to make more normal, healthy T cells. Anti-retrovirals won’t cure HIV, but with their help it’s possible to live as long as anyone else.

There are three types of anti-retroviral:

Reverse transcriptase inhibitors
Protease inhibitors
Integrase inhibitors

Your doctor may prescribe more than one of these types of drugs for you - this is called combination therapy.

If you take anti-retrovirals, it is likely that you will experience side effects like muscle aches and pains, sleeping problems, headaches, tiredness, diarrhoea, skin rashes and loss of appetite. These might go away after a few days or weeks, but they might last for as long as you are on the drug.

Go to managing anti-retroviral side effects and eating and anti-retrovirals for advice on how you can cope with these.

                                                                                                                                                             
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