FOREIGN travel and HIV medication

International travel continues to increase dramatically. Are you planning a long-haul trip soon? Have you thought about managing your HIV medication when your trip takes you to a different time zone? If you are travelling soon, read on...

Without a safe way of adjusting the timing of your medications while abroad, life can be difficult. Do you really want to wake at 4am to take medications with a meal? Or end up taking night-time medicines at 10am? Here we suggest ways of tackling long-haul travel problems.
Therapy is more likely to be effective if doses are taken on time, and none missed. A long haul flight across many time zones can create prolonged intervals between doses. If time intervals between doses are increased, drug levels in your blood may fall below the minimum needed to suppress HIV. If this goes on, it can create ideal conditions for developing drug-resistant virus.
Example
Drug A is usually taken at 8am once daily.
On the day of travel, the dose taken at 8am UK time.
The next day, it is taken in Los Angeles at 8am California time (Time zone difference eight hours)
So the interval between doses is 32 hours, instead of 24.

For an infrequent traveller, this may mean relatively few missed pills during a year, but for a frequent traveller the number of missed doses can soon add up.