HIV Treatment and Care
Medical research is still searching for the perfect cure for HIV and AIDS. There are, however, measures taken to prolong the progression of HIV to AIDS. Post-exposure prophylaxis is known to reduce the risk of infection given that treatment was administered immediately after exposure.
The most common type of treatment for AIDS is HAART or highly active antiretroviral therapy. This treatment combines at least three antiretroviral drugs to be taken everyday for the rest of an infected person’s life. This combination therapy is applied because HIV can develop immunity from a specific antiretroviral drug when it replicates. HAART, however, has not proved to be an effective treatment for AIDS, curing about less than fifty percent of all reported courses of treatment. The side effects of HAART are insulin resistance, birth defects, an increased risk in cardiovascular, among others.
Combination therapy is rather expensive and the drugs used for this treatment are not easily available, especially to infected people from third-world countries. These people usually receive treatment from diseases caused by a weakened immune system. Success in the treatment of these diseases is only temporary.
AIDS Buddy
Ideally, a vaccine will completely wipe out HIV and AIDS because not only is it preventive, but it is also cheap. A number of medical associations such as Heinrich Pette Institute of Experimental Virology and Immunology at Hamburg and Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden have been showing promise, but a vaccine is yet to be developed.