AIDS is a life-threatening disease also known as acquired immune deficiency syndrome. It is actually the last stage of another condition caused by a virus known as HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus. AIDS symptoms are caused by a person suffering from a compromised immune system, which makes the individual much more susceptible to the effects of bacteria, viruses, and other invading organisms that can precipitate disease and infection. The treatment for AIDS focuses on controlling the symptoms for as long as possible and on improving the quality of a patient's life using a variety of drugs since there is currently no cure for the disease.
Opportunistic infections
Someone that develops AIDS has already had a long history of a damaged immune system from an HIV infection. The patient with AIDS is extremely at risk from what are called opportunistic infections, or infections that are able to take advantage of an impaired immune system such as certain types of pneumonia. The white blood cells in the immune system that are responsible for leading the attack against foreign bodies in the body are called CD4 lymphocytes. One symptom of AIDS that actually identifies the disease is when someone with HIV has a CD4 lymphocyte count that is 200 or lower, since the normal range is anywhere between 800 and 1,200 in a healthy person.
AIDS symptoms
There are a variety of symptoms associated with AIDS, with the majority of them connected to whatever infections have been able to take hold in the patient. Night sweats are frequently observed in an AIDS sufferer and long-lasting fevers that are higher than 100 degrees Fahrenheit are not uncommon. Constant diarrhea and weight loss are also AIDS symptoms. Headaches, blurry or double vision, and shortness of breath are as well. Someone with AIDS can develop a dry cough and discover that white spots have formed on their tongue or inside of the mouth.
NRTIs and PIs
One way to treat AIDS and HIV is with medications called anti-retroviral drugs. These drugs come in several classes with the first one to be developed being nucleoside analogue reverse transcriptase inhibitors-NRTIs. Retrovir and Epivir are examples of this type of AIDS medication, which attempts to keep the HIV virus from reproducing in the system. Protease inhibitors, or PIs, are drugs designed to stop the HIV virus from replicating in later stage cases. Medications like Norvir and Prezista fit this description. Protease inhibitors are often used in combination with other anti-HIV drugs to be more effective.
NNRTIs and NtRTIs
Variations of anti-retroviral drugs include non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors and nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors. Going by the acronyms of NNRTIs and NtRTIs respectively, these medications work by short circuiting the HIV virus as it attempts to reproduce. NNRTIs include such drugs as Viramune, Sustiva, and Rescriptor while Viread is the only Food and Drug Administration approved NtRTI. Viread has shown that it can affect AIDS as well as hepatitis B and seems to work in patients which are not helped by NNRTIs.
Specialized inhibitors
Science has seen drug-resistant strains of AIDS come to fruition in recent years, with many of the aforementioned drugs unable to affect these versions of the disease. Fusion inhibitors, namely the drug Fuzeon, have proven to be able to suppress some of these strains. Fusion inhibitors acquire their name from the fact that they work by not allowing the membrane of the HIV virus to fuse or join with the membranes of healthy cells. Integrase inhibitors are used for treating AIDS patients who seem to have become resistant to other drugs. Isentress is the only member of this drug class so far to gain FDA approval to treat AIDS according to the Mayo Clinic website. Selzentry is what is known as a chemokine co-receptor inhibitor; it is employed to treat a maverick form of AIDS called CCR5-tropic HIV1.
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