It doesn’t happen a lot with a lot of the medications we have now but there’s the potential of HIV drug resistance, which just means that the virus has gotten smart and finds ways for the medication not to work.
So what I see in my clinical practice is that, you start a medication and then you’re not taking it every day or you take it every so often or you start for a week and then you stop for a week and then all of a sudden that medication doesn’t work anymore.
But it’s not something that you want to play around with. Why would you want to complicate that regimen by messing it up and becoming resistant to that medication? It’s a lot easier to just take one pill once a day. Be consistent with it and be done with it.
If you’re on a regimen, an HIV treatment regimen and you become resistant don’t despair. You do have other options.
Dr. David Malebranche, MD, MPH, a clinician-researcher specializing in HIV, gives the lowdown on all things HIV care and treatment in the latest installment of the #AskTheHIVDoc video series.
