Amphotericin B is often referred to as “Amphi-Terrible” in medical settings due

Question

Amphotericin B is often referred to as “Amphi-Terrible” in medical settings due to its effects in treated patients. Describe when this drug should be prescribed, and provide a biological reason for its damaging activity on host cells.

HAART, or highly active antiretroviral therapy, is currently recommended for the treatment of HIV and involves the administration of three or more medicines at one time. Explain why this combined therapy approach is more effective than single drug treatment in the management of HIV infection, providing current evidence to support your answer.

Explanation / Answer

Amphotericin B is an antifungal medication. It is generally used to treat serious fungal infections, and the protozoan diseases like leishmaniasis. The fungal infections that are treated by using Amphotericin B are aspergillosis, blastomycosis, candidiasis, coccidioidomycosis, and cryptococcosis.

This drug is extracted from Streptomyces nodosus. As per the WHO list of essential medicines Amphotericin B is one of the most effective and safe medicine in the health system.

Amphotericin B is a polyene drug. It binds irreversibly to ergosterol. This results in the disruption of the membrane integrity and which ultimately cause the death of the cell.

The highly active retroviral therapy or HAART is also called triple cocktail treatment as three or more than three drugs are used to treat HIV at a once.

Suboptimal therapy such as use of single or double drugs may have only short immunologic effects and will allow detectable viral replication and generation of resistance mutations.

with HAART, HIV can be managed like diabetes. HAART is given for the treatment of established HIV infection. with HAART viral load will be reduced to undetectable level, and the resistance of HIV will be reduced, all these things are not possible with single drug therapy.

Thus HAART is more effective than the single drug therapy.

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