People with HIV can expect to live a near-normal life expectancy if diagnosed and treated early.
With that said, many factors can take back those gains and shorten a person’s life expectancy.
Some individuals can expect to live even longer.
Illustration by Michela Buttignol for Verywell Health
The cost of ongoing care and treatment can cause financial burdens and undue stress.
Dealing with these concerns is seen to be just as important as getting a viral load to undetectable levels.
This, in turn, can affect your long-term survival.
This involves two or more drugs used in combination that block stages in the virus' life cycle.
Most antiretroviral therapies come in pill form.
Even if your diagnosis is delayed, it still benefits your health and longevity to start treatment immediately.
How Long Can I Live Without Treatment?
Fortunately, with appropriate treatment, a person with HIV may never develop AIDS or severe HIV-related complications.
How to Get Support
Ensuring the longest possible life with HIV requires a commitment to therapy.
Even so, some factors can undermine a person’s ability to do so.
Poverty, stigma, and racism can stand in a person’s way of accessing care and treatment.
Other behaviors like smoking and injecting drug use are directly linked to a loss of life years.
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