Anti-Retroviral Therapy

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Anti-Retroviral Therapy Introduction: HIV stands for Human Immunodeficiency Virus and it is the cause of AIDS. T-cells are white blood cells that go around your body trying to find infections and diseases. When HIV gets into your body, it starts to attack T-cells so that they can duplicate and attack more T-cells. The immune system can normally prevent the virus from attacking but HIV attacks the immune system, which means that it can’t get rid of the virus. Once HIV attacks enough T-cells, you get AIDS. AIDS stands for acquired immunodeficiency syndrome but not everyone with HIV gets AIDS. It is only when your immune system is damaged then you get AIDS. If you get treated before that happens, then you wont get AIDS. Scientists think that …show more content…

There are many different kinds of drugs and one of them is anti-retroviral therapy. Anti-retroviral therapy consists of three different anti-retroviral drugs and it helps stop HIV in the blood and reduces it to lower levels. This will help reduce the risk of HIV transmission. It is not a cure but it helps control the HIV virus so that you can live longer and it will not spread to other people. By controlling the virus, it means that it will stop the HIV virus from multiplying which means that there will be less HIV in your body. This gives time for the immune system to recover and even though there is still HIV in your body, the immune system is able to fight off the infections. (AIDS.gov …show more content…

There are many different drugs that are known as anti-retroviral and people find it hard to choose the combination of anti-retroviral drugs but that’s not the worst thing. The most negative thing about anti-retroviral therapy is that you need to take the medication correctly every day or else the virus will evolve and the drug will not work. This will make the medication pretty much useless and it wont help. This means that you have to pay close attention to when you take the medication. (U.S Department of Veterans Affairs 2015) To make the therapy efficient, you must take 3 drugs and this is called combination therapy. If you don’t take 3, it might not be as efficient as well. Anti-retroviral therapy can have a few side effects as well like any other cure. You could get diarrhoea, vomiting, rashes and many others. (ADVERTing HIV and

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