About Anti-Retroviral Therapy (ART):
- ART is a combination of medications that treat human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).
- HIV is a virus that destroys CD4 cells (also called helper T-cells), an important part of the immune system.
- While ART cannot cure HIV, prompt HIV treatment can help all people with HIV live long, healthy lives and reduce the risk of HIV transmission.
- Although there may still be HIV in the body, the additional CD4 cells keep the immune system strong enough to fight off infections.
- By reducing the amount of HIV in the body, HIV medicines also reduce the risk of HIV transmission.
- One of the main goals of HIV treatment is to reduce a person’s viral load to an undetectable level.
- People with HIV who maintain an undetectable viral load have effectively no risk of transmitting HIV through physical relationship, and a significantly lower risk of transmission through other means (such as shared needles).
- It is a combination of medications. Taking a combination of medications, rather than just one, makes the treatment more effective.
- HIV treatment is called “antiretroviral” because HIV is a retrovirus.
- This means it uses its genetic material (RNA) as a template to make DNA.
- Types of ART medications include:
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- Entry inhibitors. These include attachment inhibitors, fusion inhibitors, CCR5 antagonists and post-attachment inhibitors.
- Capsid inhibitors
- Nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs)
- Non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs)
- Integrase inhibitors/integrase strand transfer inhibitors (INSTIs)
- Protease inhibitors
- Pharmacokinetic enhancers
- Combination medications
