What is HAART?
HAART stands for “Highly Active AntiRetroviral Therapy.” It is a combination HIV therapy that contains at least three drugs from at least two of these classes:9 • NRTI (nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor) or “nuke” • NNRTI (non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor) or “non-nuke” • PI (protease inhibitor) HAART combinations are effective because they slow HIV from multiplying at different stages in the process. HIV medicines reduce the amount of HIV in the blood. The amount of HIV in the blood is called your “viral load.” Your doctor will prescribe HIV meds that help get your viral load as low as possible. This is one of the goals of HIV therapy — keeping HIV under control so that your viral load remains low.9 In some cases, your viral load can become so low that the viral load test cannot find HIV in the blood. Doctors call this an “undetectable viral load.” This is a good sign because HIV may do less damage to your body. But remember, a low viral load does not mean that
HAART stands for highly active antiretroviral therapy. It is the combination of at least three ARV drugs that attack different parts of HIV or stop the virus from entering blood cells. Even among people who respond well to HAART, the treatment does not get rid of HIV. The virus continues to reproduce but at a slower pace.
Related Questions
- Are there gender differences in starting protease inhibitors, HAART, and disease progression despite equal access to care?
- Can durable viral suppression in patients with primary HIV infection using HAART lead to HIV eradication?
- Does transient HAART during primary HIV-1 infection lower the virological set-point?
