Hi Docs, thanks for all of your help. Sadly, my best friend was recently diagnosed with HIV about three months ago and is now meeting with a nice HIV doc to see what he needs to do in order to beat this thing. Well, apparently his viral load is not too bad (he told me it was like 30,000) and his CD4 count is at 660. The thing is, he's really conflicted about when to start therapy. He told me his doc has left it up to him if he wants to begin therapy

Thanks for your post.

Assuming that other than the shock of the new diagnosis, your friend isn't experiencing HIV symptoms, with his CD4 count of 650, there's no need to rush into treatment.

Indeed, I rarely start treatment on the first, or even second clinic visit, rather using this time to develop a healthy doctor-patient relationship and work on getting all the appropriate historical and laboratory information that's needed to establish a good informational baseline.

I hope this brief note is helpful Write back anytime with any questions. BY