Total Pageviews

Saturday, October 27, 2018

Viral Rebound...


I take issue with U + U, undetectable equals untransmittable.  I have no problem with the concept in a controlled setting.  There are issues with it in day to day life.  At times, medicines fail or resistances develop.  At best most "undetectable" people  have  blood work every 3 - 6 months.   There's a lot of wiggle room in their to be sure of U = U.

This article doesn't specifically deal with this, but it's close enough to cause concern.  This piece deals with how quickly the virus's numbers rebound in patient's blood & semen.  These patients were monitored for suppression for 36 weeks, with regular labs.  The final labs while on the meds were at week 32 & 36.  Then the men were taken off the meds for 12 weeks.  

The study tested how quickly the virus would rebound in case of a regimen interruption.   In some cases the rebound was as early as week 38.  2 weeks was all it took in some cases.  Now this was a small study, but to 80% of these men rebounded quickly.  2 weeks could be well before the patient's next blood test.  That would leave plenty of time to transmit the virus to someone else while the patient thought they were undetectable, therefore untransmittable. 

Take care.

Cya...

No comments:

Post a Comment