In regards to strains.

[Ihavehope]

I am a bit confused. The more I read about virus strains the more it indicates that those of us newly infected are most likely to carry a strain resistant to all or most drugs. I asked my ID Doctor this and she laughed and said No, back int he 80's there was no such thing as a geno test, but she didn't answer my question.

[racingmind]

Hope,

You need to have a genotype test done. This will determine (actually it's a prediction) of what drugs you might be resistant to according to the strain of HIV you have.   I had it done immediately after my diagnosis, and thankfully it predicted that I would not have resistance to any of the current antiretroviral drugs.  But, since I'm not on meds yet, the reliability of the prediction has not been confirmed.... Ask your ID doctor about genotyping if you haven't already had it done. The less resistance you show = the more options you have concerning meds if a particular treatment fails.  Try not to stress about it until you have more information.

Dxx

[bocker3]

Ihavehope,

Really -- try not to stress about this.  Hopefully your doc is running (or will order very soon) a Resistance test on you.  This will give you the answers you seek.  In the meantime, keep remembering to breathe -- it really and truly can help with the anxiety that dealing with your new diagnosis entails.  There are so many possible regimens available that it is very unlikely you would be resistant to them all.
I do want to bring something up that is very important though -- if you ask your doctor a question and she doesn't really answer it for you -- say so and ask it again.  Now is not the time to worry about how your doctor might view you --- it is about making sure you get the answers you need (and the care you need, of course).  If you start feeling uncomfortable about asking questions to your doc or constantly are presented with "non-answers" then it may be time to consider finding a different doctor. 
Remember that you two are partners in your care -- communication and understanding are key components of this care.

Let us know how things go,
Mike

[poet]

Well to help I hope, yes, back in the 1980's we didn't have either genotyping tests or viral load tests.  We also didn't have the meds now available, so when someone infected someone else, he or she got the virus resulting from whatever it had done within his or her partner and all the partners that partner had had back to the beginning.  Think of the flu strains, perhaps, which mutate and the flu shots we get try to hit based on what we should be seeing in any given year?  Or you may have heard of the infections in hospitals and in sports which have mutated around antibiotics, hence the concern about the overuse of antibiotics.  If you try to stop/curb/kill something out there in nature, it's survival depends upon its being able to work around what you are doing. 

The theory (someone will have the research urls) is that when you got infected, you received the strain present in the person who infected you, but it wasn't the Adam and Eve strain:  it was the strain which combined any number of mutations so that if, for example, someone was on and off a medication and his or her virus had figured out how to work around it, that is what you inherited via infection.  Put a lot of these mutations together, and you or any one infected now could inherit any number of mutations in your particular strain.  I hope this oversimplification helps a bit.  Win

[sdcabincrew74]

Resistant to all meds?  Highly unlikely.  The majority of folks get infected with a strain that allows almost all meds.  According to my doc about 15% of all new infections are resistant to Sustiva (which is what I have).  That means 85% of new infections are good to go with all the drugs.  It is always good to start with a geno/pheno test so you can start on a therapy that is known to work for your virus.  Since I am resistant to meds, I started with a PI based cocktail which works great for me.  Do not panic, just get the geno/pheno type test and get a cocktail that works right the first time.