HIV Disease Management in the Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) Era

Abstract

Copyright: © 2012 Ramana KV. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection, with the complexity of disease and its progression has become a challenge to human beings. A UNAIDS global estimate reveals that currently 33.2 million people are living with HIV infection world wide [1]. HIV infection leads to variable disease course in different people, amongst them are long term non-progressors, who survive for more than 10 years after getting infected. The biological basis of this variability in the disease progression is still unknown. Due to the chronicity of the disease and the extent of morbidity it causes, management of such individuals has become a challenge for physicians treating HIV infected patients. To effectively monitor the disease progression and the response to Highly active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) in the poor, developing and economically weak third world countries that carry most of the burden of HIV seropositive patients, it becomes financially overburdened to acquire resources and infrastructure necessary for patient management. Monitoring the disease progression and the response to Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) is traditionally carried out using TCD4+ cell counts and HIV/RNA viral load [2].