AIDS and HIV Medications: Expanding Options

Today, HIV-positive people have many options for AIDS and HIV medication. These options include:

• Anti-HIV medications that treat HIV infection
• Drugs that treat side effects of the disease or HIV treatment
• Drugs that treat opportunistic infections that result from a weakened immune system

Researchers are continuing to develop many new types of AIDS and HIV medications.

Anti-HIV Medications

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved more than 25 antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV infection. They can help in these ways:

• Lower your viral load
• Fight infections
• Improve your quality of life

Even when these anti-HIV medications are effective, however, you can still transmit HIV to others. They are not a cure for HIV.

A group of HIV specialists has developed guidelines for the use of these anti-HIV medications. The current goals are to:

• Control the growth of the virus
• Suppress symptoms
• Produce as few side effects as possible

To do this, doctors recommend that you take a combination of anti-HIV medications from at least two of the main classes. This combination is called highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). It helps combat new resistant strains of the virus that emerge as HIV makes copies of itself. HAART also decreases the rate of opportunistic infections.

If you are HIV-positive, you should begin HAART:

• If you have symptoms of HIV.
• If your CD4 cell count falls below 350, whether or not you have symptoms. CD4 cells are a type of immune system cell.

These are the three main classes of anti-HIV medications.

1. Reverse transcriptase (RT)inhibitors help block an important step in the HIV life cycle. There are two types of RT inhibitors.

Nucleoside/nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs) bind to the RT protein. This disables it, keeping HIV from making copies of itself.

The FDA has approved these NNRTIs:

Non-nucleoside RT inhibitors (NRTIs) stall reproduction of HIV. They force HIV to use faulty versions of building blocks.

The FDA has approved these NRTIs:

In July 2006, the FDA also approved the first one-pill, once-a-day product to treat HIV. Called Atripla, it combines three different RT inhibitors (efavirenz + tenovir DF + emtricitabine).

2. Protease inhibitors (PI) interfere with an enzyme that HIV uses to create infectious viral particles.

The FDA has approved these protease inhibitors:

3. Entry orfusion inhibitors help block HIV's entry into healthy cells. At this time, Fuzeon (enfuvirtide), ENF, is the only one the FDA has approved.