What is highly active antiretroviral therapy?

Highly active antiretroviral therapy, sometimes called Haart, is the primary treatment of human immunodeficiency virus infection (HIV). Usually this includes the use of a combination of several different types of antiretroviral drugs that are designed to reduce the amount of virus circulating in the body. There are several different types of antiretroviral drugs that can be used, all of which work slightly differently.

The aim of highly active retroviral therapy is to find a combination of antiretroviral drugs that reduces the amount of the circulating virus as much as possible to reduce HIV complications as possible, causing the least side effects. They all work somewhat differently. The most commonly used classes in highly active antiretroviral therapy include protease, merger and inhibition integrames, as well as nucleotide, nucleoside and non -reverse transcript inhibitors.

Protease inhibitors help block protease, enzyme that HIV uses copying and is capable of infectionAt other human cells. Integrase inhibitors focus on enzyme integrase, which HIV normally uses to insert its genetic material into human cells. Human cells are required to replicate HIV, so blocking genetic material transmission means that the virus cannot make more copies.

Mushroom inhibitors help prevent HIV from joining human cells, which again helps prevent replication, a process for which human host cells are usually required. Inhibitors of nucleotides, nucleoside and non-leveoside reverse transcriptases-technically three separate classes of antiretrovirol because they inhibit enzyme reverse transcripts in slightly different ways-HIV prevents copies of its genetic material.

In most classes of the above -mentioned classes of antiretrovirols, there are often several different drugs. When using highly active antiretroviral therapIE is generally recommended a combination of at least three drugs from at least two classes. For example, one common form of highly active antiretroviral therapy combines nucleotide reverse transcript inhibitor and non -nucleoside reverse transcript inhibitor and nucleoside reverse transcript inhibitor. The use of several drugs in highly active antiretroviral therapy is generally in an effort to prevent HIV from becoming immune to a single drug.

Finding the right combination of drugs for individuals often takes some time. During HAART, human blood is usually tested at regular intervals to find out how much of the virus circulates in the body. This is called viral burden. The aim is generally to achieve a viral burden a very low or even undetectable level that has been shown to help reduce the risk of complications such as serious, sometimes fatal infections. If a viral load testing does not show a significant response for a specified period of time, different drugs can be tested.

The side effects of the drug may also affect the selection of drugs included in the highly active antiretroviral individual therapy. Some people may have more drugs on certain drugs than other than others. Healthcare providers can often work with individuals to find out which drugs cause the smallest side effects, but still reduce the viral burden. This can help ensure that the person remains on highly active antiretroviral therapy in the long run, which is necessary because there is no medicine for HIV.