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Glossary

 

 

Nucleoside Analogues

Non-nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors

Protease Inhibitors

Fusion Inhibitors

Other Drugs

 HIV TREATMENTS 

The best use of antiretroviral drugs is still evolving, but several ideas have become the foundation for the current standard of care:

The goal of effective treatment is to slow viral replication to undetectable limits; that requires at least three drugs.

Resistance to these drugs can develop quickly if too many doses are missed. So if a drug is too difficult to tolerate or too complicated to manage, another regimen should be considered.

Viral loads that rise appreciably above detectable limits suggest that resistance to one or more of the drugs has developed, and a change of treatment should be considered. As with CD4 counts, one lab result is not a dependable trigger for a major decision; at least one more viral load should be drawn. But once a decision is made to change a regimen, all drugs should be replaced at the same time, since switching or adding just one or two makes it easy for the virus to become resistant again.

DRUG CLASSES

Nucleoside Analogue Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NRTI)

These are a class of drugs that fight HIV by interfering with the virus's ability to make a key enzyme called "reverse transcriptase. These drugs act at the DNA level. They also affect normal cell growth, such as bone marrow cells, so there can be significant toxic effects.

Non-Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors (NNRTI)

NNRTIs work by a different mechanism than NRTIs, which also attack reverse transcriptase. NNRTIs are more specifically targeted to HIV than the NRTI, so they have fewer side effects. However, resistance develops more quickly with these drugs. The NNRTIs are always used in combination with other anti-HIV drugs.

Nucleotide Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors

Drugs based on molecules that make up DNA and RNA (nucleotides) that are chemically altered to inhibit production or activity of disease causing proteins. Maybe more stable and active than nucleosides.

Protease Inhibitors

Antiviral drugs that act by inhibiting the virus protease enzyme, thereby preventing viral replication. Specifically, these drugs block the protease enzyme from breaking apart long strands of viral proteins to make the smaller, active HIV proteins that comprise the virion. If the larger HIV proteins are not broken apart, they cannot assemble themselves into new functional HIV particles.

Ribonucleotide Reductase Inhibitors

This class targets an enzyme that is used to produce proteins the virus needs and which is made by blood cells.

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