triumeq hiv, poz, strain, med Who is taking TRIUMEQ PILL HIV MED??

[KINGDIAMOND]

Does TRIUMEQ still works if you keep on missing doses on and off from it and Can it be a med resistant strain or what can occur if they pick up a med resistant strain from someone and on the same time that they are on it will that mess it up .??

[fillmyholeftl]

If you keep missing dose of any HIV drug you risk that drug developing med-resistance. 

[Detchiller]

Fillmyholeftl is right. If you want to be on meds, got to figure out a daily time regimen that works for you. Most meds have a good half-life which means, for example, if I forget to take mine at night, I can take it as soon as I can first thing in the morning and everything will still be ok. But I met a guy in Chicago who just kept forgetting or skipping for days and developed resistance to most of the meds. VL had gone down but he wasn’t at undetectable level because the virus was a challenge to the meds.

[bbaremich]

As a biologist myself, I can tell you that missing one dose every once in awhile (maybe once a week, but not more), won’t have any effect on the virus’ resistance. The half life of antivirals are very long because the kidneys do a terrible job at filtering them out, which is also why your doc will always monitor kidney function on antivirals. 

If you repeatedly miss doses, it can lead to viral resistance. HIV is a very sloppy virus, meaning it has a poorly functioning replication machinery, which can make mistakes easily when making copies of itself. When one of these mistakes leads to drug resistance, then that new variant of the virus will thrive. Having multiple drugs in your system stops this because while resistance to one may form, it’s highly unlikely resistance to the other two will also occur. This is why HIV positive people take three different drugs (although usually not 3 different pills) and PrEP people take two drugs. 

[Pigmut]

I thought prep people take only one drug 1 pill?

[negbtm]

4 hours ago, Pigmut said:

I thought prep people take only one drug 1 pill?

Nope. Truvada is a brand containing emtricitabine and tenofovir in a single pill. Two "drugs" from a chemical standpoint, one "drug" from a brand standpoint. 

[goodblkdicknass]

I stopped in November. I may have to change the drug to something different

[ErosWired]

@KINGDIAMOND - Part of your question that doesn’t appear to have been addressed yet is what happens if you pick up a med-resistant strain of HIV from someone else when you’ve only been taking tour Triumeq on and off. Picking up a second strain is known as “superinfection” and is a very real risk, especially for those poz men not on medication who choose to bareback. Even for poz men on ART and neg men on PReP, the risk exist of bareback exposure to drug-resistant strains that may not be deterred by medication.

The fact that you’re not taking your Triumeq on time doesn’t do anything about your chances of getting superinfected, except to ensure that you’ll have less defense against a wider array of strains. What it does do, however, is significantly increase the chance that you’ll develop a treatment-resistant strain all on your own.

Every single day, my cell phone sounds an alarm to tell me to take my pill. I set that alarm three years ago on daily repeat. I haven’t missed a dose. You can do this, man.

[goodblkdicknass]

On 2/4/2018 at 3:23 PM, goodblkdicknass said:

I stopped in November. I may have to change the drug to something different

Started back up about 8 months later. It immediately lowered my viral load. Already undectable. Still risky to take a break though.