Learn more about HIV :: A Cure for AIDS?

Is there a cure for AIDS?

There is no cure for AIDS. There are drugs that can slow down HIV and slow down the damage to your immune system, but there is no way to get all the HIV out of your body. There are other drugs that people take to prevent or to treat opportunistic infections.

New treatment drugs are dramatically prolonging the lives of many HIV positive people and making them feel healthy. Successful treatment suppresses HIV to very low levels, preventing destruction of CD4 cells by HIV. However, if treatment is withdrawn, viral rebound occurs quickly.

Each type, or 'class', of drugs attacks HIV in a different way: nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, also called 'nukes'; non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, or NNRTI's; and the third class of antiviral drugs, protease inhibitors. The newest class of antiviral drugs includes fusion and attachment inhibitors. Since during the replication of the virus, the virus can adapt to the drug's presence, using just one antiviral drug is not recommended. Drug combination therapies are often referred to as "highly active anti-retroviral therapies" (HAART).

For some, however, the drugs have side effects that may prevent people from taking them. Some side effects can be gastric upset, fever or rash, fatigue, peripheral neuropathy, and dietary restrictions, and for some the drug stops working. If only one antiviral drug is used it is easy for the virus to develop 'resistance' and stop working. But if two or three drugs are used, it is very hard for the virus to adapt to all three drugs at the same time.