The AIDS virus is one of the most deadly and most wide spread diseases in the
modern era. The disease was first found in 1981 as doctors around the United States
began to report groups of young, homosexual men developing a rare pneumonia
caused by an organism called Penumocystis carini. These patients then went on to
develop many other new and rare complications that had previously been seen only in
patients with severely damaged immune systems. The Center for Disease Control in
the United States named this new epidemic the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome
and defined it by a specific set of symptoms. In 1983, researchers finally identified the
virus that caused AIDS. They named the virus the human immunodeficiency virus, or
HIV. AIDS causes the immune system of the infected patient to become much less
efficient until it stops working altogether.
The first drug that was approved by the American Food and Drug
administration for use in treating the AIDS virus is called AZT, which stands for
None - This image is in the public domain and thus...
English: AZT (zidovudine), the first medication sh...
English: Synthesis of AZT from thymidyne Polski: S...azido-thymidine. AZT was released under the brand name of Retrovir and it's chemical
name is Zidovudine, or ZDV. The structural name of AZT is 3'-azido-3'-
deoxythymidine. AZT works by inhibiting the process of copying DNA in cells. More
specifically, AZT, inhibits the reverse transcriptase enzyme, which is involved in the
DNA replication process. When DNA is replicating in a cell, there is a specific enzyme
that works along one side of the original DNA strand as the DNA is split into two
strands, copying each individual nucleotide. This enzyme is only able to work in one
direction along the nucleotide string, therefore a different enzyme, or rather a series of
different enzymes is required to work in the opposite direction. Reverse transcriptase
is one of the enzymes that is required to work...