Describe the different classes of antiretroviral meds used to combat HIV infection

Answer 1

There are currently five classes of antiretroviral medications: 1) Entry inhibitors interfere with the virus's ability to bind to receptors on the outer surface of the cell it tries to enter. When receptor binding fails, HIV cannot infect the cell; 2) Fusion inhibitors interfere with the virus's ability to fuse with a cellular membrane, preventing HIV from entering a cell; 3) Nucleoside/nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors are faulty DNA building blocks. When one of these faulty building blocks is added to a growing HIV DNA chain, no further segments can be added on, halting HIV DNA synthesis. Non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors bind to reverse transcriptase, interfering with its ability to convert HIV RNA into HIV DNA; 4) Integrase strand transfer inhibitors block the HIV enzyme integrase, which the virus uses to integrate its genetic material into the DNA of the cell it has infected; and 5) Protease inhibitors interfere with the HIV enzyme called protease, which normally cuts long chains of HIV proteins into smaller individual proteins, thus preventing the assembly of new virus particles.