AIDS Drugs Going Strong and Steady

According to the Professor Matthias Egger, of the University of Bern in Switzerland, AIDS drugs are still effective and patients suffer from fewer side effects due the drug.

There is also decreased development of resistance due to the drug. It been ten years since the antiretroviral (ARVs) have been introduced in the market with no major complication and drawbacks. Scientists say that the combinations of drugs reduce mortality and progression to AIDS by about 80-90 % but tuberculosis (TB) has become a deadly co-infection among AIDS patients. The study results were based on the analysis of more than 22,200 HIV positive people in Europe and North America who started treatment between 1995 and 2003.

It was published in the Lancet medical journal with the help of the Antiretroviral Therapy Cohort Collaboration. According to the lead researcher Bernard Hirschel at the Geneva University Hospital in Switzerland, the only effective way to reduce the incidence of AIDS is to start the treatment at an earlier stage when the CD4 cell count dropped below 350 or if the individual showed symptoms of illness.