HIV TREATMENT

Strategy Employed in HIV lifecycle

Stopping HIV: Strategy 1

This is a promising place to try to stop AIDS, by helping the immune system early on in its fight against HIV. One possibility is an AIDS vaccine. Here's how it would work:

An uninfected person is exposed to a form of the virus ( attenuated, inactive form ) which does not cause illness, but which does  stimulate  the body's defenses. The immune system is tricked into producing millions of killer T cells and antibodies custom-made to fight the virus. Some of these defenses stay in the body.

Later, if the person is infected with HIV, the immune system has a head start in its battle.

But there are problems with this approach.

So although this is a promising place in the life cycle to stop AIDS, there is still a lot of work to do before we have an effective vaccine.

Stopping HIV: Strategy 2

To stop the virus here, we would have to keep it from ever attaching to a T cell. Let's see how this would work.

This shape on the T cell is a protein called CD4. If a lot of  artificial, decoy CD4 is given to an infected person, then HIV could attach to the decoys instead of to the T cells

The problems here are that the decoy CD4 does not remain in the body very long, and it does not attach well to HIV circulating in the bloodstream. But improved decoy CD4 might eventually be used for an intense,  short-term battle  against a new infection

Stopping HIV: Strategy 3

 Drugs that work at this step look like the building blocks used to make DNA. But they're  faulty building blocks , so once they're used, the building process comes to a halt.

And if the virus cannot turn its RNA into DNA, it cannot hide out in the cell, and it cannot reproduce. It sounds great, but there are problems with these drugs.

HIV is  constantly changing , and eventually it is no longer tricked by these faulty building blocks. HIV becomes resistant to these drugs, and the life cycle continues the same as before. Another problem is that these drugs can  damage non-infected cells  which also need to make DNA to reproduce.

This is a good place to break the life cycle, but it's not a cure.

Stopping HIV: Strategy 4

There are some possibilities that may stop AIDS at this step in the life cycle. Scientists are trying to make drugs to stop the production of the virus's proteins. Without these proteins, the virus cannot survive.

They're also working on a drug that would  prevent  the  proteins being cut  into usable pieces. Proteins in long uncut strands are useless, and the life cycle would be broken

This is a promising place to break the life cycle, but these drugs are not a cure: they would  only slow down  the replication of the virus.

Stopping HIV: Strategy 5

This is a very late stage in the life cycle of HIV. But it might eventually be a last resort for stopping AIDS. Scientists are working on ways to  boost  an AIDS patient's immune system at this step, so that when new viruses bud from infected cells, the body's defenses are strengthened and ready to fight back. There also are many drugs now available to treat opportunistic infections, which are often the cause of death in people with AIDS.

This research is promising. But this late stage of HIV's life cycle is a very difficult place to stop AIDS.

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