Stopping Treatment

Until the recent past, HAART was generally considered to be a lifelong necessity. However, there is now considerable research looking at the consequences of interrupting treatment for varying lengths of time and in varying ways.

• Structured treatment interruption (STI) is a term used to describe an approach in which HIV treatment is stopped, with your doctor's support and guidance, for a planned period of time or until certain pre-planned milestones (often, an increase to a certain level of viral load) are reached, after which treatment is restarted.

• Structured intermittent therapy (SIT, also called "pulsed therapy") is a slight variation of an STI, in which therapy occurs in pre-planned intervals, with breaks in between each treatment period.

You may also hear people refer to "drug holidays," which may be their name for an STI or SIT, or may just mean that they take occasional unstructured breaks. The latter is definitively not a good idea.

Unfortunately, treatment interruptions may cause serious problems, such as the development of drug resistance limiting future treatment options, and, in some cases, the development of life-threatening complications. Researchers strongly recommend that treatment interruption only be done within the setting of supervised clinical research, not on your own at home.