Q. What are some strategies of the anti-retroviral drugs used in the AIDS treatment?
The Anti-retroviral drugs used in AIDS treatment try to approach any of the several steps of the HIV life cycle. There are three major groups of drugs: the reverse transcriptase inhibitors, that attempt to disallow the formation of DNA from the viral RNA (zidovudine, or AZT, ddI, d4T, 3TC, nevirapine, efavirenz, etc.) the protease inhibitors, that block the enzyme protease necessary for the assemblage of new virus (ritonavir, saquinavir, nelfinavir, indinavir) and the group of entry inhibitors (includes fusion inhibitors), that try to block the entry of HIV into the host cell (enfuvirtide, a fusion inhibitor).