Dr. Pierone, First I'd like to compliment you for giving persons living with HIV so much hope. I tested + in April with a vl>1M. It had dropped to 250,000 after 1 month, but was still at 247,000 after four months. It's making me crazy thinking that this is the set point, but since I recently started meds, I won't know. My CD4 count was 500, CD4%=27, vl=243,000 before treatment. Could my vl have possibly gone down more, and was my decision to start treating premature? Thank you in advance.

Thank you for your kind words. It sounds like you decided to go on HAART because of a persistently high viral load following primary infection. It is possible that the viral load could have gone down more on its own and we don't know if the decision to start was premature (although some treatment guidelines would suggest deferring therapy). You can't be faulted for making the choice to start therapy and many doctors/patients would do the same

Implicit in the principle of a set point, is the premise that when one stops antiretroviral therapy, levels will return to this point. So in the future, if and when you decide to stop therapy, you will see what the set point turned out to be. One of the hopes of early aggressive therapy for HIV infection is that it might change the set point for the better. Hope that this helps and best of luck to you.