AIDS Treatments

There are a variety of treatments available for AIDS. All treatments have bad side effects. The effects and the side effects of the treatments vary for each individual. A combination of the drugs have proved to be very effective but still, certain patients will have unbearable side effects while others will not improve their conditions with certain combinations.

Antiretroviral Therapy
The first drug that was used was AZT and it is still the first choice of drug to treat AIDS. Other drugs include ddI, ddC, d4T, 3TC. These drugs all basically work the same. Their job is to inhibit reverse transcriptase. This means that the enzyme which HIV uses to create DNA from RNA will no longer function and therefore, stop production of new virus particles. Unfortunately, these drugs are quite poisonous to the body and cause dangerous side effects.

Protease Inhibitors
The first protease inhibitor to be legalized was Saquinavir. Its job is to inhibit the enzyme protease from functioning. Protease is the enzyme that makes proteins within HIV to for the glycoproteins. Without these, HIV will not be able to infect the T4 cells. Protease inhibitors are the newer branch of drugs being researched. It still produces side some effects and the long term effects are not for certain yet.

Degree of Infection
The viral load is the amount of virus particles per cubic mm of blood. Higher viral loads means a more virus in the body and a worsened immune system. Another measure that is used is the CD4+ count. Normal people have a count of about 1000. HIV kills these immunity cells so the CD4+ count in AIDS patients tend to be very low or possibly even 0.

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