My husband started treatment late (viral load high and T-cell counts at 59). He is taking Truvada and Rayataz with a Norvir booster. For one year, VL is undetectable, but after counts rose slowly to 137, they went back to 80 (hoping it's a blip and next reading will go back up). Since many who start late end up with T-cell counts leveling off below 200, I wonder if IL-2 therapy is an option. If interleukin (or other immune booster) could raise T-cells, doesn't this seem like reasonable idea? I see little on the Body site about IL-2 dated past 2000...did this research not pan out? Thanks for your answer.

Two very large international studies are still ongoing to determine the clinical utility of adding IL-2 to an HIV treatment regimen. Although smaller uncontrolled studies have demonstrated that CD4 counts can be increased, even with people with very low CD4 counts, what the optimum dose and dosing interval is, and whether these cells work as well and positively affect clinical outcome is unknown to justify IL-2 use and the inherent side effects that come with receiving this drug.