Hi there. My question has to do with stopping treatment,and what to expect. after five years of being on meds (undetectable),I wanted to give my body a break. athough my numbers are not stellar ( 350-390 range) with my lowest cd4 being 220 before treatment, I am still going to give it a shot for awhile. so my question is: what can I expect to feel like? some say that I will experience a flu-like symptom as my v/l rises, and that I can expect to be more fatigued.Is this true? I guess I should add that my pre-treatment v/l was only 14,000. does the flu-like feelings only happen if you rebound with a very high viral load?

thanks for your time.

Some patients do report a flu-like syndrome when they come off therapy that is thought to be associated with rebounding viremia. This generally resolves as the viral load begins to decline again, usually back to the patients "set point". While your set point is relatively low, your rebound viremia when coming off therapy is likely to be significantly higher, at least for the first month or so, before returning to the set point.