Treatments

 

Till now, no one is able to find a cure for aids but there are medications to prolong an infected person’s life and fight the complications caused by Aids. Specially designed treatment are implemented to minimized the amount of HIV in the body and maintain the immune system as strong as possible.  The treatment consists of drugs that have to be taken every day for the rest of a person’s life.

Treatment strategy for AIDS virus involves the following principles: 

1. To have an effective drug that kills the HIV virus once it enters the body. 

2. To create a vaccine that would prevent the disease. 

3. To educate people worldwide about the dangers of AIDS and how to prevent the HIV infection. 

Treatment of AIDS and HIV Infection

Anti-HIV (also called antiretroviral) medications are used to control the reproduction of the virus and to slow or halt the progression of HIV-related disease. The aim of antiretroviral treatment is to keep the amount of HIV in the body at a low level. This stops any weakening of the immune system and allows it to recover from any damage that HIV might have caused already.

 When used in combinations, these medications are termed Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART). HAART combines three or more anti-HIV medications in a daily regimen, sometimes referred to as a "cocktail". Anti-HIV medications do not cure HIV infection and individuals taking these medications can still transmit HIV to others. If only one drug was taken, HIV would quickly become resistant to it and the drug would stop working. Taking two or more antiretrovirals at the same time vastly reduces the rate at which resistance would develop, making treatment more effective in the long term.  Anti-HIV medications approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fall into four classes:

1. Nonnucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NNRTIs), such as nevirappine (Viramune) and efavirenz (Sustiva), bind to and block the action of reverse transcriptase, a protein that HIV needs to reproduce.

2. Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NRTIs), such as zidovudine (Retrovir), tenofovir DF (Viread), and stavudine (Zerit), are faulty versions of building blocks that HIV needs to make more copies of itself. When HIV uses an NRTI instead of a normal building block, reproduction of the virus is stalled.

3. Protease Inhibitors (PIs), such as lopinavir/ritonavir (Kaletra), disable protease, a protein that HIV needs reproduce itself.

4. Fusion Inhibitors, such as enfuvirtide (Fuzeon ), are newer treatments that work by blocking HIV entry into cells.

There are five groups of antiretroviral drugs. Each of these groups attacks HIV in a different way.

Antiretroviral drug class	Abbreviations	First approved to treat HIV	How they attack HIV
Nucleoside/Nucleotide Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors	NRTIs, nucleoside analogues, nukes	1987	NRTIs interfere with the action of an HIV protein called reverse transcriptase, which the virus needs to make new copies of itself.
Non-Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors	NNRTIs, non-nucleosides, non-nukes	1997	NNRTIs also stop HIV from replicating within cells by inhibiting the reverse transcriptase protein.
Protease Inhibitors	PIs	1995	PIs inhibit protease, which is another protein involved in the HIV replication process.
Fusion or Entry Inhibitors		2003	Fusion or entry inhibitors prevent HIV from binding to or entering human immune cells.
Integrase Inhibitors		2007	Integrase inhibitors interfere with the integrase enzyme, which HIV needs to insert its genetic material into human cells.

At the beginning of treatment, the combination of drugs that a person is given is called first line therapy. If after a while HIV becomes resistant to this combination, or if side effects are particularly bad, then a change to second line therapy is usually recommended.

Second line therapy will ideally include a minimum of three new drugs, with at least one from a new class, in order to increase the likelihood of treatment success.