My brother just had his first blood test since stopping his cocktail
treatment last year. His numbers were a T-Cell count of 169 and a
viral load of 38,000 (it had reached 600,000 several years ago).

Are these numbers good or bad? He seems to be in good physical
health at the moment. Our family is worried if he needs to begin
a new cocktail right away, as he is currently mad as a hatter and
locked up in a mental hospital and there is no way he is going to
be able to comply with a medication regimen in his current state.

He's already ruined two separate cocktail combos by going off of
them. Our family is worried that there might not be a third
combo available, and even if there is it is unlikely they will be
able to change one or more of the drugs if the side effects are
too severe.

"Darth Bobo" <evilclown@dark.cloud.empire.tr> wrote in message news:<Jt2dnWWa1KX-Klnd4p2dnA@bravo.net>...
A T-Cell count of 169 is less than 200 which is the cutoff point for
AIDS. If you have a CD4 T-Cell count of 200 or less you have AIDS.

A viral load of 38,000 copies of HIV RNA per ml of serum (blood) is
above 50 copies/ml which is the "gold standard" for viral supression.

I sure as hell wouldn't want them.

It's a slow illness. You have time.

If that's all it took to ruin them then they weren't much a treatment
were they? The reality is that going off them isn't what breeds
resistant virus it's taking less than the dosage required to suppress
the virus down the the "gold standard" of 50 copies or less (or very
near that level.) Once HIV is allowed to reproduce quickly in the
presence of some-but-not-enough anti-retrovirals you are selecting for
the virons that can reproduce the most despite the drugs.

If going off the drugs was the problem I'd be in deep doo-doo since
I've gone off mine over fifty times in the last two years. (no joke)

The trick is to convince your brother that the drugs are "crystal meth
pills." Maybe you could grind them up and mix them with crystal meth.
He'd be sure and take them on time every time. Can you snort HAART?

"Baby Peanut" <baby_p_nut2@yahoo.com> schreef in bericht
news:96d83290.0406071534.55d933c0@posting.google.c om...
It gets better...

That would be the all new definition of "AIDS". Whatever happened
to "Old School" AIDS? The one where you actually had to be ill with
KS or massive loss of bodyweight?

Alex

"Alex" <avdeelen.REMOF@wanadoo.nl> wrote in message
news:40c5dd18$0$1745$abc4f4c3@news.wanadoo.nl...
Are you pineing for the "Old School AIDS" when after the first appearance of
an opportunistic illness the expected lifespan of the patient was 6 months
to 1 year Alex?

It would be ethically and morally wrong to wait for the appearance of an
opportunistic illness before offering treatment to a patient when there is
very clear data that correlates CD4 counts with the health of the patient
and progression of HIV to AIDS. There are massive amounts of empirical data
(retrospective studies of HIV/AIDS patients tracking CD4 count and disease
progression) that show without question that CD4 counts bellow 200 indicates
serious likelihood of opportunistic illness thus indicating that antiviral
treatment and prophylaxis's for opportunistic illnesses are both effective
and needed if the health of the patient is of any concern.

Gary Stein

Alex wrote:
"All new" as of 1993. Even the 1987 definition included more than
KS or wasting.

Do try to keep up, at least within the last decade.

--
Larry D. Farrell, Ph.D.
Professor of Microbiology
Idaho State University