Treatment Your doctor may choose a combination of drugs to fight HIV infectionaa

Treatment

Your doctor may choose a combination of drugs to fight HIV infection. These drugs are called antiretroviral therapy. By using several drugs simultaneously (often called a drug cocktail), your doctor hopes to increase the effectiveness of AIDS treatment by attacking HIV at multiple points. Combining drugs also limits the risk that HIV will become resistant to drugs, which would make the drugs ineffective.

Many studies have shown that people with high levels of virus in the blood (the viral load) will progress more rapidly to AIDS. Though it is not possible to completely clear the virus from the body, the goal of anti-retroviral therapy is to suppress the virus so that it cannot be detected in the blood, to increase the CD4 count, and to strengthen the weakened immune system. Currently available anti-retroviral drugs include:

• Nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, such as zidovudine (Retrovir, AZT), didanosine (Videx, ddI), stavudine (Zerit, d4T), abacavir (ABC) and lamivudine (Epivir, 3TC). There is a combination pill called Combivir, which contains lamivudine and zidovudine. Tenofovir (Viread) is a commonly prescribed drug in a related family (nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors).
• Protease inhibitors, such as saquinavir (Invirase, Fortovase), ritonavir (Norvir), indinavir (Crixivan), nelfinavir (Viracept); these also come in combinations, such as lopinavir/ritonavir (Kaletra)
• Non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, such as nevirapine (Viramune), and efavirenz (Sustiva)
• Fusion inhibitors, such as T-20 (Fuzeon)

One common treatment approach is HAART (highly active antiretroviral therapy), which combines three nucleoside analogues, two nucleoside analogues and one protease inhibitor, or two nucleoside analogues and one non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor. Many other variations exist. Many of these drugs have side effects, such as nausea and diarrhea. In addition, some have severe drug interactions with commonly used medications. Fusion inhibitors are reserved for patients who are infected with a drug-resistant HIV strain.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved more than 22 drugs for treating AIDS-related conditions, including drugs that fight opportunistic infections and Kaposi's sarcoma. In addition to these medications, people with low CD4 counts should take certain medications to prevent the development of opportunistic infections. For example, people should take trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (Bactrim) if their CD4 count is less than 200 per cubic milliliter of blood.

Treatment scams for AIDS rob trusting people of up to $10 billion annually. To fight these scams, the FDA formed the AIDS Health Fraud Task Force in 1989. Based on results of FDA investigations, some unapproved therapies to avoid are "energized" water, "ozone therapy" and the hydrogen-peroxide "treatment."