Border Free Supply Logo
Border Free Supply

Medical Expert

What Does HIV Viral Load Tell You?

HIV viral load is a measure of the amount of the HIV virus present in the blood. Your viral load can help determine the severity of your HIV infection and the likelihood of developing AIDS. Sometimes, your viral load can also indicate the effectiveness of antiretroviral therapy.

What Does It Tell You?

Viral load is the amount of HIV in your bodily fluids, such as blood and semen. The higher the viral load, the more active the virus is and the greater the risk of transmission of the virus.

A high viral load indicates that your medication is not working better and the infection is more active. The likelihood of complications and illnesses linked to a compromised immune system increases with a higher viral load. It might also indicate that you have a higher chance of contracting AIDS.

A viral load below 100 copies/ml can get you an “undetectable” status, while a viral load above 400 copies/ml increases your risk of AIDS. An undetectable HIV status prevents HIV disease from progressing and allows people to live longer. It also lowers the risk of transmission from an HIV-positive individual to a healthy person.

Viral Load Test

Laboratory test that detects the amount of HIV in a person’s blood. HIV is a virus that can damage the immune system, and a high viral load may be an indicator of HIV infection.

A viral load test can help determine whether treatment is needed and whether the person is progressing well on antiretroviral therapy (ART).

Test for HIV viral load checks for RNA, the component of HIV that contains the instructions for self-replication of the virus..

Compared to earlier HIV testing, RT-PCR (real-time polymerase chain reaction) tests are far more sensitive in detecting HIV. They can discover as few as 20 HIV RNA copies in a milliliter of blood.

Here are the results you can get from a viral load test and what your viral load range mean:

A high contains 100,000 up to a million HIV RNA. It means that your viral rate is growing fast, which can quickly escalate to developing AIDS.

A lower is below 10,000 copies. It means that the virus is not actively producing copies of itself as fast and can cause slow damage to the immune system.

An undetectable HIV viral load is less than 20 copies. It is the goal of HIV treatment. However, this does not mean that you are cured.

Get a viral load test as soon as you receive a positive HIV diagnosis. It provides your doctor with a “baseline measurement” to compare your future test results and track how well your treatment will be going.

How Fast Does Your Viral Load Increase Without Meds?

There is no definitive answer to this question, as viral loads can vary significantly from person to person without any medication. However, according to the National Institutes of Health, a viral load increase of more than 100 copies per milliliter (copies per milliliters is a standard measure used to describe the amount of virus present in a sample) is generally considered to be a sign that HIV drugs treatment is necessary.

A person’s viral load can increase rapidly without medications and can grow more than ten times  if they have only a few hundred copies of HIV in their blood. Similarly,  it can increase more than a million times if they have millions of copies of untreated HIV in their blood.

Share this post:

Sign up for health care tips and news

Receive offers and updates from our team of experts.

Browse Our Experts Advice
Our experts regularly write about ways to improve your health and wellbeing.

Related Products

Related Articles & Advice

HIV

National HIV Testing Day

As National HIV Testing Day approaches on June 27th, many people are reminded of the importance of getting tested for HIV. For one woman, this

Read More »
HIV

How is HIV Transmitted?

HIV is a contagious viral infection that has recorded millions of cases worldwide and is still continuing to grow in numbers. Inarguably, this virus has

Read More »
Search NOW

Can't find what you need?

Find Medication

Find Help & Advice

Find Medication

Find Help & Advice

FAQs

Any site that offers you medication without a prescription or based on a remote consultation will likely be gone tomorrow. With Border Free Supply, you are sure to receive generics which are produced by Canada and India’s top rated manufacturers.

It is permitted to buy non controlled substance medication for personal use online. Please read the FDA memo for more information on personal importation of medication.

Generic medication is simply a medication that has been manufactured by a different company, rather than the company who originally held the patent on the product. Generic medications work in the exact same manner as brand name medications and are bio-equivalent to their brand name counterparts. Generic versions of medications cost far less because they invest less money on marketing.

India & Turkey have one of the largest pharmaceutical manufacturing industries in the world! In fact, many of these companies are doing contract manufacturing for the North American market, and therefore their facilities are FDA approved. We source our medications only from the top-rated manufacturers who follow GMP guidelines, and produce their medicine in world-class manufacturing facilities. All of the Indian generic medications we sell are approved by the World Health Organization, Pepfar, and the Indian FDA.

Prescriptions are valid for one year or until the refills authorized have been exhausted.

We can send up to a 90 day supply at one time. Ordering a 90 day supply saves on shipping and allows your to have a larged amount of medicaiton on hand at one time.