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How long should someone be on PEP?
28 days ago i had unprotected sex(condom broke but was replace after a minute of wet unprotected sex) with an HIV infected person but only found out about it later on...I was put on PEP 60Hrs later.I am almost done with my course but my Doctor insists i should continue taking PEP for atleast 2 to 3 months.Is that right? please respond.thank you.
What is it with this place..everyone wants to be the Doc...I'll go with what you said Teak cause being on those things for just 28days already messed up my body...I think i would be dangerous to go on for more months..Thanks though..
A girl in italy got blood transfer from a HIV positive source. The chances of contracting HIV in this scenario is over 90%. She had PEP treatment for 9 months, and didn't contract HIV. Yes it is true that the duration of a normal treatment is 4 weeks (28 days). A study of monkeys shows that the PEP treatment increases it's effectiveness with the length of the treatment. While a treatment of 28 days was 100% effective in preventing HIV, 10 days was less effective. This simple study shows a direct linkage between the length of the treatment and how effective it is to prevent seroconversion. It is naive to belive that the magic length is 28days.
However i think there are more to the story. There are 2 (or 3) types of pills to fight HIV: PI type pills and NTRI type pills. Initially the HIV virus is inside your blood. It takes a few days for the HIV virus to reach the lymph nodes and get a grib on your body. If the treatment is started within this window period with a NTRI type pill, the drug will block the virus from infecting other cells, and only stay in your blood. Since every cell has a lifetime of a few days-weeks, these infected blood cells will eventually die. Now if you also are on a PI type pill, this drug destroys a protein inside a HIV infected cell, whos function is to replicate the virus.
What this means is that even though a few cells are infected in your body, the PI type pill can stop a process inside the pill that serves to replicate itself. This way, the infected cell can't reproduce itself and make you HIV+.
So here is my interpretation of all this. The reason why a longer treatment will increase it's effectiveness, is simply because the slightest amount of infected cells that the medicine couldn't reach, will eventually develop seroconversion. A longer periode of treatment means you have more time to reach the last cells. Remember that a cell has a expiring lifetime of approximately a few days to a few weeks. If one of these cells managed to survive the medicine after the first few weeks, there is a small risk that the cell can reproduce itself after end of the treatment.
However i think there are more to the story. There are 2 (or 3) types of pills to fight HIV: PI type pills and NTRI type pills. Initially the HIV virus is inside your blood. It takes a few days for the HIV virus to reach the lymph nodes and get a grib on your body. If the treatment is started within this window period with a NTRI type pill, the drug will block the virus from infecting other cells, and only stay in your blood. Since every cell has a lifetime of a few days-weeks, these infected blood cells will eventually die. Now if you also are on a PI type pill, this drug destroys a protein inside a HIV infected cell, whos function is to replicate the virus.
What this means is that even though a few cells are infected in your body, the PI type pill can stop a process inside the pill that serves to replicate itself. This way, the infected cell can't reproduce itself and make you HIV+.
So here is my interpretation of all this. The reason why a longer treatment will increase it's effectiveness, is simply because the slightest amount of infected cells that the medicine couldn't reach, will eventually develop seroconversion. A longer periode of treatment means you have more time to reach the last cells. Remember that a cell has a expiring lifetime of approximately a few days to a few weeks. If one of these cells managed to survive the medicine after the first few weeks, there is a small risk that the cell can reproduce itself after end of the treatment.
You need to take your conclusive test 3 months after your last dose of nPEP medication.
Thanks.Same thing i know.I told her 28days and she said i need to keep taking it in order to make sure the virus is eliminated...and to tell the truth i think its messing up my body...Then one more thing.Is it true that on average Hiv will show within 25 days and is there any possibility that Pep can cause you to have false results?like does it affect your testing in antway?
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