BASIC PRINCIPLES OF TREATMENT

To date, the therapy of HIV infection remains a difficult and unresolved problem, because there are no tools that can radically cure patients with HIV-infection. In this regard, therapeutic measures aimed at preventing or slowing the progression of the disease. In the treatment of HIV infection secrete anti-retroviral therapy, prevention and treatment of opportunistic infections, as well as pathogenetic treatment of some syndromes.

Antiretroviral therapy allows to achieve accurate lengthening of life expectancy and out of time develop AIDS.

For the successful treatment of patients with HIV-infection requires: the presence of chemotherapeutic agents aimed directly at HIV, the presence of drugs to treat opportunistic parasitic, bacterial, viral, protozoal or fungal infections that determine the clinical course of infection in a specific patient; the possibility of therapy of cancer; correction drugs immunodeficiency pathologically caused allergic, autoimmune and immune complex syndromes, characteristic for HIV-infection.

In modern conditions in HIV infection used three groups of drugs acting on enzymes of the virus — nucleoside analogs that inhibit reverse transcriptase of HIV; non-nucleoside inhibitors of the same enzyme; protease inhibitors of HIV.

Basic principles on the use of antiretroviral drugs:

• treatment should start before the development of any significant immunodeficiency and lasts a lifetime
• therapy is conducted by a combination of three or four antiretroviral drugs (such tactics of management of patients with HIV infection identified as highly active antiretroviral therapy, HAART abbreviated)

The effectiveness of the treatment is checked by determining the value of viral load and the dynamics of the number of CD4+ T lymphocytes. When unsatisfactory results of treatment of correction of chemotherapy.

Thus, the methods applied in the treatment of HIV infection can be divided into two groups:

• first: the use of antiretroviral drugs against HIV
• second: the use of drugs for other infections and other lesions, developing on the background of HIV

Antiretroviral therapy still has significant shortcomings:

• high cost of treatment
• apparent side effects
• possible development of resistance to commonly used drugs
• the need for frequent changes
• long-term use of a large number of medicines