I was diagnosed HIV+ in January and was put on efz and truvda from Febraury 2009 as my CD4 was below 350. I have continued to have night sweats and nightmares as well as feel numbness in my hands. Am a post polio case! I have never had any serious ailments so far and have never missed mu medication for a long spell! My question is: what is the effect if stopped taking my med for sometime?

Hello,

Discontinuing your antiretroviral drugs will allow HIV to once again begin wildly replicating in your body, which in turn will destroy CD4 cells. As your CD4 cell count falls, you become increasingly susceptible to opportunistic infections and malignancies.

Your current problems, including nightmares and numbness, may well be side effects of your antiretroviral medications (particularly the efavirenz component). I would strongly advise against discontinuing your medications. Rather, I suggest you talk to your HIV specialist physician, explaining your ongoing symptoms and considerations for discontinuing treatment. He should be able to evaluate and treat your symptoms as well as consider switching one or more of your antiretroviral medications (most likely the efavirenz). You can read much more about treatment interruptions, including the results of the SMART clinical trial, in the archives of this forum.

Good luck. I'm confident a better solution than discontinuing your medication can be found.

Dr. Bob