Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART)

Anti-Retroviral Therapy Latest News

The Supreme Court recently directed all States to respond to concerns relating to periodic stockouts, transparency in tendering and procurement, and drug quality and certification processes of the of Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART) drugs for People Living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV).

About Anti-Retroviral Therapy 

• ART is a combination of medicationsthat treat human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
  • HIV is a virus that destroys CD4 cells (also called helper T-cells), an important part of your immune system. 
  • Without the protection of CD4 cells, you’re more likely to get life-threatening infections.
• While ART can’t cure HIV, it can reduce the levels of HIV in your body. 
• Low levels of the virus mean your body can produce more CD4 cells. 
• This keeps your immune system healthy and makes you less likely to get serious infections.
• ART medications use a variety of ways to stop HIV from getting into your cells and reproducing. 
• You usually take a combination of two to four medications that work in different ways to reduce the levels of virus (also called viral load) in your body. 
• Taking a combination of medications, rather than just one, makes the treatment more effective and reduces the risk that it’ll stop working. 
• If your viral load is low enough, tests won’t be able to detect HIV in your blood (undetectable levels).
• HIV treatment is called “antiretroviral” because HIV is a retrovirus.
  • This means it uses its genetic instructions (RNA) as a template to make DNA (most of the time, in human cells, DNA is used to make RNA). 

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Anti-Retroviral Therapy FAQs

Q1. What is the purpose of anti retroviral therapy?

Ans. It is treatment of people infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) using anti-HIV drugs

Q2. What is AIDS?

Ans. AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome) is a life-threatening condition caused by the HIV.

Q3. What is a retrovirus?

Ans. A retrovirus is a virus that uses RNA as its genomic material. 

Source: LL