Strategies for managing
opportunistic infections

May 2008     View PDF     En español

Maintenance therapy

After treating an OI, it’s sometimes necessary to take medications for life to prevent it from coming back. This is called maintenance therapy. In some cases, maintenance therapy may be stopped if a person’s immune system recovers and sustains its control of HIV with the use of HIV therapy. The guidelines around starting and stopping maintenance therapy are outlined in Project Inform’s publication, Opportunistic Infections Chart.

Some people with repeated herpes outbreaks will take long-term anti-herpes drugs to prevent them from coming back. Similarly, some people troubled with repeated fungal infections will take long-term anti-fungal drugs. However, in both cases maintenance therapy is somewhat controversial. This is because these organisms can develop resistance to the drugs, leaving few treatment options if or when a serious infection occurs.

When herpes or fungal infections continue to happen, it may come down to a quality of life issue. Long-term therapy may be the only viable option for a person. Carefully weighing the risks and benefits of these approaches is critical to making the right choice. Some will choose to risk losing viable treatment options to ease the problems of recurrent infections. Others will simply choose to treat these infections as they happen in hopes of preserving the benefits of therapy.