Fiona Smith

Abstract

The development of antiretroviral drugs has revolutionized the treatment of HIV. Currently, there are two categories of antiretroviral drugs available to suppress the replication of the virus: reverse transcriptase inhibitors and protease inhibitors. This paper aims to determine whether the treatment of the virus with protease inhibitors is superior to those using reverse transcriptase inhibitors. First, the effects of HIV are presented. This encompasses the structure and life cycle of virus. Next, the three classes of antiretroviral drugs are introduced, which are then compared according to their adverse drug reactions and interactions. Lastly, the conclusion evaluates the superiority of the protease inhibitors to the reverse transcriptase inhibitors.

Introduction

HIV/AIDS is one of the world’s greatest threats for which there is no cure. The disease, which was initially stereotyped to the gay community, has now wreaked havoc on many underdeveloped and developing nations with an estimate of 3.1 million deaths in 2004 (UNAIDS, 2004). Despite an increase in the international spending to combat AIDS from 250 million dollars in 1998 to 4.8 billion dollars in 2002, the United Nations reports that the rate of infection still continues to rise (UNAIDS, 2004). In addition, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS, has estimated the number of people living with HIV/AIDS in 2004 to be 39.4 million, which includes the 4.9 million people who acquired the disease in 2004 (UNAIDS, 2004).

In 1987 AZT was the first antiretroviral drug to be approved by the FDA and gave great hope for the eradication of the virus (Bartlett, 2001). However, the virus quickly developed resistance to the drug and smashed any hope that an antiretroviral drug could effectively rid the body of HIV. Furthermore, the rate at which the virus mutates and its resistance to any single antiretroviral drug cause an urgency in the production of medications that could effectively suppress the virus to an undetectable level with minimal side effects. Hence, since then many daughter drugs of AZT and drugs that target other areas of the life cycle of the virus have been developed. Currently, there are two types of HIV drugs: reverse transcriptase inhibitors and protease inhibitors. This research paper aims to show the effectiveness of these two types of treatment and to investigate whether the treatment of the virus using protease inhibitors is superior to that using reverse transcriptase inhibitors. However, in order to understand how the two different inhibitors of the virus work, it is imperative to understand the structure and the life cycle of the virus. Hence, the paper first targets the structure and life cycle HIV, tracing how HIV affects the body before introducing the medications that have been developed to suppress the virus. Furthermore, the comparison of the two classes of antiretroviral medication is narrowed down to the analysis of two categories: side effects and potential drug interactions.

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