Your doctor may choose a combination of drugs to fight HIV infection.

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)