HIV Revolutionized Viral Treatment
Antivirals to save the world.
Before the public backlash against political and even medical response to HIV and the AIDs pandemic, viruses were treated in 2 ways.
1. Vaccines. Wonderful vaccines have been invented for some of the deadliest viruses affecting children, Measles, Mumps, and Rubella. Vaccines nearly wiped these diseases off the face of the planet! Sadly, the decisions of the few are affecting all of us.
2. Supportive care. If you had the flu, for example, there wasn’t much to do besides supporting your symptoms as much as possible—Tylenol, fluids, and bed rest. There wasn’t more to do.
Today, you’re much more likely to be prescribed oseltamivir, more commonly known as Tamiflu. It works by targeting an enzyme the virus produces during replication that allows it to cut open a cell wall and exit. This leaves the viruses trapped in the host cell until the cell dies, taking all the viruses inside with it.
It’s a very clever way to target a virus and relies on the HIV pandemic for its research and development.
It’s hard to imagine, especially as we just witnessed the rapid global response to Covid, but back in the 1980s, the world didn’t care about HIV/AIDs. It was a disease going around the homosexual community and had very little acknowledgment from the wider world or even the medical world. The first deaths from what would later be known as HIV were reported in 1981, but the virus wasn’t isolated until 1984. A retrovirus that attacks and destroys CD4 T-cells, destroying your immune system.
In 1983, the CDC requested $40 million for researching a treatment. Congress only allocated them $1 million.
Eleven thousand one hundred fifty-two reported AIDs cases were identified in 1984.
In 1985, the actor Rock Hudson died from AIDs. That, unfortunately, gave congress and president Ronald Reagan the push needed to do something.
They gave the CDC $70 million for researching HIV and AIDs.
By 1987, the very first antiviral agent went onto the market.
Zidovudine, or azidothymidine. You might have heard it call AZT.
Believe it or not, the drug was first synthesized in 1964 but was shelved as it was found biologically inert in mice studies. Ten years later, it was found to be effective against the Friend virus, a mouse virus known to cause leukemia in mice. While interesting from a scientific standpoint, we did not know of any retroviruses that infected humans.
Then in 1984, when HIV was first isolated, The United State National Cancer Institute set up a program to find compounds and drugs that might be effective against this new retrovirus. 1985 the drug proved to be effective and relatively safe; by 1987, it was being prescribed for HIV.
The drug works by targeting HIV’s reverse transcriptase. This enzyme changes HIV’s RNA strand into DNA and integrates into an infective cell’s biological mechanisms. Without this enzyme working, the virus does not replicate at all.
The first therapy showed promise and improved health in patients, but it quickly became apparent that it would not be enough. The virus quickly mutated around the drug and only added months to the lives of HIV patients.
It was still a breakthrough and proved that we could make specific drugs that could target viruses effectively. Over the next few years, several different drugs were released, and a combination of medications is now used to keep HIV at bay and give sufferers normal lives.
Life expectancy for an HIV patient now is near the same as an average adult.
This is my ongoing series about infections. A little bit of history about antiviral therapy and should not be confused with antibiotics! Next article, we’re going to focus on the history of vaccines. Why you should take them, and why you shouldn’t be scared of needles.
