When drugs with similar side effects are combined, side effects are often more severe. Antiretroviral side effects are most commonly experienced by people with advanced HIV disease, whose immune systems are very compromised. People with advanced HIV disease also tend to experience greater degrees of side effects, such as more intense nausea, persistent diarrhea and more painful peripheral neuropathy. However, even people who are newly diagnosed with HIV or asymptomatic can experience side effects and are usually quite reluctant to begin therapy for fear of them. On the other hand, many people never experience any side effects.
Side effects are often worse when a particular drug is first started and lessen over time.
This is not true for everyone. Some side effects may not even appear until after eight weeks. This information is collected and used to determine the most commonly reported side effects. These are the ones that your health care professional or treatment advocate usually warns you about. Sometimes information about side effects is not obtained until after a drug has been approved for marketing by the Food and Drug Administration and is being used by large numbers of people.