How do AIDS drugs work? AIDS drugs work by preventing the HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) form being able to multiply.
AIDS and HIV are not the same thing. AIDS stands for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. HIV causes AIDS. AIDS is the late stage of HIV infection and happens when the virus has built up to levels that the body cannot control. You can have the human immunodeficiency virus inside you and not have AIDS. Without treatment, the virus can build up and pretty much always leads to AIDS. Again, without treatment, once someone has AIDS, the prognosis is roughly three years before it proves fatal. Because the virus destroys the immune system, people with AIDS are often killed by infections that they can’t fight off or cancers that their immune system would normally be able to control.
The Human Immunodeficiency Virus gets into the body through some bodily fluids and blood. In the early days of the virus, a lot of people who received blood transfusions, such as hemophiliacs picked up the virus. Hemophiliacs were also at risk because they needed a medicine called Factor VIII, which was made from the plasma of blood donors, and those donations and donors weren’t screened for HIV until years later. Once inside the body, the virus seeks out a type of white blood cell called a CD4 cell. These cells are also called helper T cells, which is why people with HIV have to check their T cell count. Once the virus finds a CD4 cell, it goes inside and integrates itself into the DNA of the CD4 cell. Once it has done that, it can make the CD4 cell produce more clones of the virus, which leave the cell, and go free, looking for more CD4 cells to repeat the process. One CD4 cell can be made to produce about 10,000 copies of the virus. When it is spent, the CD4 cell dies. The only job the virus has is to replicate. CD4 cells are the ones that find pathogens and signal the other immune cells to attack them. Without CD4 cells, our body cannot detect viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens that get inside us. If they can’t detect them, then there is no way to kill them, and the pathogens gradually overwhelm the body until something becomes fatal.
There are some people who are naturally immune to HIV. They have a mutation in the gene that the virus activates to get into the CD4 cells so that it can replicate. If it cannot get into the cells, then it cannot do anything. However, the majority of people have no immunity. Once someone has become infected with HIV, there is no way of knowing how long it will take to completely overwhelm the body’s immune system. We have approximately 700 billion CD4 cells in our blood and more are being made all of the time. It takes a long time for the virus to replicate to a level where it can kill enough of these to make a difference. It will happen though.
The first case was in June of 1981 and the first people to die with AIDS did so before there was even a name for the illness. Since the disease first appeared, 32 million people have died of it. It took a long time to find a drug that worked because the Human Immunodeficiency Virus can mutate very rapidly. Whatever drug the doctors used, the virus mutated to survive it and the resulting virus was stronger. It is also hard to fight because the virus takes control of the white blood cells and these are the cells that any medication would need to activate to fight the virus. On top of that, the virus makes itself part of the DNA of the white blood cells, which makes it very hard to target, and means that there is always a bit of the DNA left, no matter how good the drugs.
Currently, there is a treatment called ART, which stands for Antiretroviral Therapy. It works by stopping the virus from replicating itself. It is impossible to completely eradicate the virus, but the available medicine can reduce it to a level where the immune system isn’t compromised. A person with HIV that takes the therapy can live a long and normal life. The only problem with this medication is that it can be expensive. There are generic versions that bring the cost down, but the countries with the most HIV positive people are countries that can’t really afford the medication. There is still a lot of research being put into HIV and gene therapy could potentially be a cure. Gene therapy could take the gene that naturally immune people have, the one that stops the virus getting into the cells, and insert it into all other people. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://hivinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv/fact-sheets/hiv-treatment-basics
https://www.americangene.com/blog/why-is-it-so-difficult-to-find-an-hiv-cure
https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/about-hiv-and-aids/what-are-hiv-and-aids
https://www.health.ny.gov/diseases/aids/general/resources/child/docs/chapter_1.pdf
https://hivinfo.nih.gov/understanding-hiv/fact-sheets/hiv-life-cycle
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innate_resistance_to_HIV
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