Resistant Strains Of Hiv Essay, Research Paper

You are coughing, sneezing, have a runny nose and your body aches. Most of us have had the flu and know exactly the symptoms I am speaking of. Well, what if you went to your doctor and were treated with antibiotics and such, but just didn’t get well. Would you think twice about it? Would you wonder what was wrong with you? Or would you blow it off as a bad flu season? Stephen Marcus, a 25 year old male from Los Angeles, blew it off. He didn’t think twice about it. Didn’t really know any better. Stephen wasn’t suffering from the flu, though. After three months of this “cold,” as he called it, Stephen was finally diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

This isn’t the worst of Stephen’s story, though. After following the highly complex triple-therapy drug regimen, otherwise know as a “cocktail” for six months, Stephen’s condition was not improving. He returned to his doctor only to find out that he had been exposed to a virus that was resistant to the now traditional drug cocktail therapy. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, March 14, 2001, approximately 14% of newly infected people are infected by a strain of the virus that is already resistant to one or more of the antiretroviral drugs.

Today I will educate you on the topic of HIV, more specifically, these drug resistant strains. I will begin by telling you what causes resistance to the antiretroviral drugs. I will then illustrate how these strains are effecting treatments of HIV patients, and will finish by informing you of the Center for Disease Control s plan to keep new infections from increasing in America.

There are several ways resistant strains of HIV can form. Because the virus reproduces so rapidly mistakes, called mutations, are common. Most of these mutations during replication cause the virus particle to become so weak that it can t reproduce. Those mutated strains do not pose any harm. Other mutations, though, can make a virus particle resistant to one or more of the drugs. While the drug continues to work against regular HIV, the mutant HIV reproduces without restraint. According to the Chicago Sun Times, February 8, 2001, in as little as a few days, the resistant HIV can become the dominant strain, thus severely restricting the affects of the treatment.

Patients can also produce new resistant strains of HIV if they fail to follow the strict regimen exactly as prescribed. This regimen can include anywhere from 5 to 30 pills a day, some taken at night, others in the morning, some with food and others with water. With such a complicated regimen, a large amount of patients either skip pills, or chose to go off the drugs. In either case, the virus rebounds and in a majority of those patients, the HIV becomes resistant to drugs. When more people are being treated, more develop resistance- which increases the likelihood of transmitting a resistant virus.

The prevalence of these resistant strains has quadrupled in just six years, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on February 8, 2001, leaving more and more people with fewer treatment options before they ve even had a chance to try a single drug, and when a patient becomes resistant to one drug, it limits the utility of all classes of drugs. Current medicines prescribed in the multi-drug cocktails only cripple HIV so that it can no longer replicate, none of them kill infected cells. So an HIV patient, even after four or five years of antiviral therapy, can still not only carry the normal HIV virus, but can also carry any resistant strains that their body might have produced during treatment. Although studies suggest that a drug-resistant strain will gradually revert back to the nonresistant type when the patient is no longer taking that drug, the Journal of the American Medical Associate, March 14, 2001, reports that those same resistant mutants will quickly emerge if the patient resumes taking that drug again.

Therapy guidelines are changing as more information is gathered about these resistant strains. In the previous 5 years, since the advent of antiretroviral antibiotics, doctors have almost immediately began treatment on HIV patients. New guidelines are being set that keep patients off these drugs until later in the course of the disease though, because long term use increases the risk that the patient s virus strain will develop resistance to the medications. Although there are numerous risks in delaying treatment, the AIDS Treatment Information Service, February 5, 2001, recommended that the new guidelines be followed to keep patients from developing a resistant strain.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, better know as the CDC, has launched a new program to counter the threat of a possible AIDS resurgence. With the HIV virus rapidly mutating and creating strains that defy some drugs, it is very important for carriers of the virus to be identified and educated to keep them from passing it on. The new campaign, called Know Now, will be aimed at identifying the estimated 900,000 Americans who have HIV, as reported by Business Week, February 19, 2001. The CDC claims that of these 900,000 Americans who are HIV positive, as many as 250,000 do not know it. The new effort is designed to reduce that proportion by encouraging high-risk people who do not know their status to be tested.

Today I hope I have enlightened you all on the real threat that HIV and these resistant strains pose to our population both at home and around the world. I first explained to you what causes the virus to become resistant to drug-cocktails, then I told you how these strains are effecting treatment, and then finished by informing you of the CDC s new program to keep infections from increasing in America. With the knowledge you have gained here today, hopefully you can all see how important it is to keep this disease under control. Don t let yourself end up like Stephen Marcus. He thought he only had a cold.