Whats your viral load?

[cboycam]

under 300....

[whatineed]

Mines now over 875,000...and it's 100% med resistant too. Only took 4 months to go from ~400,000 to over 875,000! Fucking hope my next test gets me up to 2 million! The higher my vl the better! Fucking want my precum itself to be able to convert negs

[Evan6314]

118,000 as of Dec/13.

Not on meds yet, but soon.

[GermanFucker]

Mines now over 875,000...and it's 100% med resistant too. Only took 4 months to go from ~400,000 to over 875,000! Fucking hope my next test gets me up to 2 million! The higher my vl the better! Fucking want my precum itself to be able to convert negs

Could somebody please enlighten me? To the best of my knowledge the medical facts are: Statistically speaking only those with very few T-cells left reach such high viral loads. As a result, someone with around a million should (without antiretrovirals) only have a remaining life expectancy of a few months, certainly less than a year. So how can some guys post such high numbers for years?

@ whatineed: if you're 100% resistant, isn't it more likely that you haven't got enough time left to infect many negs, as you will die soon? This isn't meant to be sarcastic, I mean it as a serious question.

Some of the numbers boasted on this thread just don't make sense to me. So is it just fantasy? Or which other factors come into play to make it possible / plausible?

[fillmyholeftl]

Fantasy...or something like it...

[rawTOP]

Could somebody please enlighten me? To the best of my knowledge the medical facts are: Statistically speaking only those with very few T-cells left reach such high viral loads. As a result, someone with around a million should (without antiretrovirals) only have a remaining life expectancy of a few months, certainly less than a year. So how can some guys post such high numbers for years?

No, you're completely wrong. (On average…) You have the highest viral load shortly after infection. Then it gradually drops and it stabilizes for a while. Then it goes up again and then falls again and it's typically at this point that your t-cells drop down below the 300 mark. It's not seen much anymore, but back in the days before ARVs guys were sometimes testing undetectable right before they died of AIDS. There was a group of guys who didn't believe HIV caused AIDS and that was one of the facts they liked to cite in support of their theory. But what they failed to realize was that you didn't "die of AIDS" you died because you had no immune system and that happened because of HIV.

So it's just the opposite of what you say - high viral load just after infection, and low just before death.

[GermanFucker]

No, you're completely wrong. (On average…) You have the highest viral load shortly after infection.

Sorry, but you misundertstood. I maybe should have elaborated more. I thought it was clear from the context, that I wasn't talking about inital infection. You are of course completely correct that one reaches such a high viral load shortly after infection as well. But depending on your immune response it drops rather quickly. Some guys on this thread are talking about "building up" their viral load and maintaining it over years, both of which doesn't apply to a primary infection, where your viral load only spikes because you're not producing antibodies yet. Once antibody production starts, it usually drops somewhat quickly, even without ARVs (of course, there's some variation, depending on one's own specific immune response).

It's just the surprisingly high number of postings along the line of "I have a viral load of a million and am completely med-resistant" (something which doesn't really apply to the freshly infected), that I just don't get.

Then it gradually drops and it stabilizes for a while. Then it goes up again and then falls again and it's typically at this point that your t-cells drop down below the 300 mark. It's not seen much anymore, but back in the days before ARVs guys were sometimes testing undetectable right before they died of AIDS. There was a group of guys who didn't believe HIV caused AIDS and that was one of the facts they liked to cite in support of their theory. But what they failed to realize was that you didn't "die of AIDS" you died because you had no immune system and that happened because of HIV.

So it's just the opposite of what you say - high viral load just after infection, and low just before death.

I have heard of that phenomenon, which you say happens just right before death. To the best of my recollection this is because at that point the immune system is completely depleted. But as far as I know it's usually more common with antibody testing, because the immune system doesn't produce enough antibodies anymore for testing. I'm not quite as sure about PCR testing, but I image it's also possible once the virus runs out of feedstock.

(Source: University of South Carolina via Google)

But either way that doesn't contradict what I said. Over the course of the latency period, the viral load will be somewhat stable or slowly climb, while t-cells are being depleted. But that point it usually doesn't go into the millions.

(Source Lehigh University via Google)

Only when t-cells have gone below the 200 or so mark, it will then grow exponentially into the hundred thousands or millions. In any case, regardless of what phenomena might happen RIGHT before death, a viral load of a million will still be indicative of an HIV infection being far along with its course. Generally speaking the viral load will RISE sharply towards the end, not decline.

Edited March 4, 2014 by GermanFucker

[rawTOP]

It's just the surprisingly high number of postings along the line of "I have a viral load of a million and am completely med-resistant" (something which doesn't really apply to the freshly infected), that I just don't get.

Well, this isn't a random sample of people on this site. The site would attract the extreme HIV fetishists who may be doing things (like seeking out new strains) which would make their results atypical.

I have heard of that phenomenon, which you say happens just right before death. To the best of my recollection this is because at that point the immune system is completely depleted. But as far as I know it's usually more common with antibody testing, because the immune system doesn't produce enough antibodies anymore for testing. I'm not quite as sure about PCR testing, but I image it's also possible once the virus runs out of feedstock.

You know, that was my recollection too, but I thought to myself - "that can't be right - how would antibodies go away?", so I changed it thinking I had gotten it wrong. Glad to hear your explanation.

[GermanFucker]

Well, this isn't a random sample of people on this site. The site would attract the extreme HIV fetishists who may be doing things (like seeking out new strains) which would make their results atypical.

I'd also imagine that some fetishists here go on and off meds (which if you want to live a long and healthy poz life is a terrible idea), as they embrace rather than fear med resistance. But that would mean ups and downs, rather than consistently high numbers. Somehow I can't shake the suspicion that some numbers are also pure fantasy.

You know, that was my recollection too, but I thought to myself - "that can't be right - how would antibodies go away?", so I changed it thinking I had gotten it wrong. Glad to hear your explanation.

I'm really sure about the antibodies. Existing antibodies in the body have a limited life span (AFAIK they have a half time of a few weeks) and production of new ones is linked to T-cell status, so if there are almost no T-cells left, antibodies for HIV will also plummet. I know for a fact that with a standard search test (antibody / ELISA), late-stage AIDS patients can test negative. The first graph illustrates that quite well, I think.

I've never heard the same thing about viral load / PCR testing, though. All I ever came across is that over the course of last year (or so) the VL usually skyrockets.

[Poz1956]

The free floating virus in the blood plasma only survives at most a few weeks, then they die off. That's why PEP works. It stops replication and keeps it stopped until what's still floating around is cleared from the system.

And of course it makes perfect sense that the viral load will drop in the late stages. If there aren't many CD4 cells kicking around in the bloodstream, there aren't many new virus factories.

As for the original question - Undetectable, thank you very much, and proud of it. Been that way for about ten years.

The highest viral load I've ever tested was 120,000 back when I took too long of a drug holiday in the early 2000's, and stupidly fell out of what they now call the Care Cascade. The CD4 stopped dropping at 89 once I got back on the wagon. It never recovered to the mid 700's I used to have, but I guess I'm happy with the mid 400's I now maintain.

I caught HIV a couple of years before the words Safe and Sex were ever used in the same sentence. It was at least a year before a tax refund was used to privately produce a booklet in New York with some of the ideas that became safe sex. It was back when condoms were used to prevent pregnancy, and gay men didn't get pregnant. It was just called fucking back then, and didn't have the catchy cowboy moniker, or rebel connotation. Diagnosed in 1985 -- the year an antibody test first became available. We didn't have viral load tests until after the first multi-drug cocktails became available in 1996.

[Evan6314]

118,000 as of Dec/13.

Not on meds yet, but soon.

Update:  So the 118,000 was my 1st result.   Jump to the May 1/14, no meds yet and it was up to 392,000.   After 4 weeks of Stribild, it was 222,000 and the other day I got my latest results from 4 months of 1 pill a day and it was 43.  I was blown away by that news.   I found a great app that reminds me at the same time every day.  (med helper) 

 

CD4 is also back up and I was happy with the news.

[raw_n_toxic]

Just got new numbers so as Aug 25,2016 is cd4-87 vl 267,500

[SuccessfulChaser]

pozzed a year ago.   no meds.    cd4 is still pretty good...a bit over 600 and largely stable/unchanging.   vl has not been exactly by the books.  had the real big (in my mind big) numbers as expected during the acute stage...something near 400k.   Dropping...but still north of 200k 8 months or so into the latency stage.  docs so far are not providing a lot of reason for the slower drop..than might be expected...but it is going down.  

[raw_n_toxic]

cd 75  vl 1,290,000 asof aug 3 2017  no meds

[Guest GoneFishing]

melts metal status here