Treatment
Is there treatment for HIV?
There are three main types of treatments for people living with HIV:
- Anti HIV drugs which reduces or kills the HIV virus
- Drugs which prevent illnesses or re-occurrence of illness (prophylaxis)
- Drugs to repair or prevent damage to the immune system
It is now clear a combination of several drugs (Combination Therapy) works best to reduce the replication of HIV. These drugs do not kill the virus completely but they do slow down and reduce the number of newly infected cells and therefore reduce the damage to the immune system. Taking Combination Therapy, sometimes known as HAART (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Treatments) has shown to be the most successful route to reducing HIV replication. Taking two or more anti HIV drugs attacks the virus more aggressively than taking just one and because HIV can become resistant very quickly to just one drug, taking two or more at a time reduces the risks of resistance.
For up to date information on the treatments currently available, new research into HIV, and of developments in the HIV field, have a look at the following web sites: