Treating HIV
- Created by: jessicawarren
- Created on: 20-04-16 09:16
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- Treating HIV
- Illness
- AIDS when symptoms of failing immune system appear/ helper T cell count drops below certain level
- Develop diseases that wouldn't normally cause serious problems in healthy people
- Usually 10 years between infection with HIV and development of AIDS
- 1) Initial symptoms of AIDS produce minor infections of mucous membranes (inside nose, ears, genitals), recurring respiratory infection
- 2) As AIDS progresses, number of immune system cells decreases further. Patients susceptible to more serious infections (chronic diarrhoea, severe bacterial infections, TB)
- 3) Late stages of AIDS- very low number of immune system cells, can develop range of serious infections (toxoplasmosis of the brain, fungal respiratory infection)
- Infections kill patient, not AIDS itself
- Antibiotics
- 1) Kill bacteria by interfering with metabolic reactions. Target bacterial enzymes and ribosomes used in these reactions
- 2) Bacterial enzymes/ribosomes different from human enzymes/ribosomes. Antibiotics designed to only target bacterial cells and not damage human cells
- 3) Viruses don't have own enzymes/ribosomes- use ones in hosts cells. Human viruses use human enzymes/ribosomes to replicate, antibiotics can't inhibit them because they don't target human processes
- 4) Most antiviral drugs designed to target virus-specific enzymes e.g HIV uses reverse transcriptase to replicate. Human cells don't use this enzyme, so drugs can inhibit without affecting host cell (reverse transcriptase-inhibitors)
- No cure
- Currently no cure/vaccine for HIV. Antiviral drugs used to slow down progression of HIV/AIDS
- Best way to reduce HIV is by reducing it's spread. HIV spread by unprotected sex through bodily fluids, HIV mother-foetus
- Illness
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