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If you are feeling more anxious or nervous, are not sleeping properly, have a lower sex drive or have lost your appetite, it is important that your doctor understands this. Starting treatment for the first time? Everyone worries about the risk of side effects before they start treatment. Before choosing your combination, ask for information about each of the drugs you might take. Ask about the likelihood of side effects. Ask what percentage of people had side effects related to each drug and how serious they were. Before starting treatment, ask for the out-of-hours phone and email contact details for your clinic. You may be asked to join a study looking at side effects. These studies are important to define the extent of side effects when different drugs are used together. People in studies are monitored more carefully and more frequently, so you may get better care. Research is essential if we want new and better drugs in the future.
Can I change drugs easily? You should be offered at least two options whenever you start or change treatment. Ask about the advantages and disadvantages for each one. Some people are not told that they have a choice. This is not right. Even if your doctor prefers one combination, you need to be involved in this choice. If you have problems with the first combination, you can easily modify the drugs. There are more than 26 HIV meds in the UK, including several that include more than one drug in each pill. While you can’t quite mix and match them, if one or more of the drugs in your combination is difficult to tolerate, you can change it for another. If you change a drug because of tolerability, you can usually use it again later if you need to [except for abacavir see page 48]. Just because you used a drug once, does not mean you have ‘used up your option’ of using it again in the future. Usually side effects improve after the first few days, weeks or months, but sometimes they don’t. See the sections on each side effect in this booklet for an idea of how long you should put up with them before changing. You do not have to continue with a drug to prove anything to yourself or your doctor. If something is wrong, ask your doctor to change to something else. Some drugs are just not for everyone.
July 2012
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