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What Is HIV Treatment?

HIV treatment involves taking highly effective medicines called antiretroviral therapy (ART) that work to control the virus. ART is recommended for everyone with HIV, and people with HIV should start ART as soon as possible after diagnosis, even on that same day.

People on ART take a combination of HIV medicines called an HIV treatment regimen. A person's initial HIV treatment regimen generally includes three HIV medicines from at least two different HIV drug classes that must be taken exactly as prescribed. There are several options that have two or three different HIV medicines combined into a once-daily pill. Long-acting injections of HIV medicine, given every two months, are also available if your health care provider determines that you meet certain requirements.

What Is HIV Drug Resistance?

When HIV isn’t fully controlled by HIV medicine, the virus makes copies of itself at a rapid rate. As HIV multiplies in the body, it sometimes mutates (changes form) and produces new forms of the virus that may not be as sensitive to a particular medicine as the original virus. This is called drug resistance.

With drug resistance, HIV medicines that previously controlled a person’s HIV are no longer effective against new, drug-resistant HIV. In other words, the HIV medicines can't prevent the drug-resistant HIV from multiplying. Drug resistance can cause HIV treatment to fail.

A person can initially be infected with drug-resistant HIV or develop drug-resistant HIV after starting HIV medicines. Drug-resistant HIV also can spread from person to person. Drug-resistance testing identifies which, if any, HIV medicines won’t be effective against your specific strain of HIV. Drug-resistance testing results help determine which HIV medicines to include in an HIV treatment regimen.

Taking your HIV medicine as prescribed helps prevent drug resistance.