AIDS therapy

I am going to breakdown AIDS treatment on a basic level. Someone has AIDS, what can you do?

Here are the options:

Protease Inhibitors

Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors

Nucleosides 

non-nucleosides

Fusion Inhibitors

Protease Inhibitors:

All the Navirs

Saquinavir

Ritonavir

Indinavir

etc

MOA:

These drugs block the protease in progeny virions, thus inhibiting assembly of new virus

Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors:

Nucleosides:

Zidovudine (ZDV) used to be called AZT

Didanosine(ddI)

Zalcitabine (ddC)

Stavudine (d4T)

Lamivudine (3TC)

Abacavir

Non-nucleosides:

Nevirapine

Efavirenz

Delavirdine

MOA:

These drugs block the transcriptase of HIV thus preventing the incorporation of DNA copy of viral genome into host DNA

Fusion Inhibitors:

Enfuvirtide

MOA:

Bind the viral gp41 subunit and block the conformational change required for fusion with CD4 cells = block entry of the virus

Now AIDS treatment is way more complicated than noted here and most patients are on several medications. This is just a basic snap shot of some of the current therapies. 

Protease Inhibitors, Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitors and Fusion Inhibitors

Shout out to First Aid!!