Resistant Strains of HIV essays

Resistant Strains of HIV essays 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 Controls 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 cant reproduce. Those mutated strains do not pose any harm. Other mutations, though, can make ...