Maraviroc: A New Hope for the Future of the HIV Infected Patients - Coursework Example

MARAVIROC (A NEW HOPE FOR THE FUTURE OF THE HIV INFECTED PATIENTS Background CC chemokine receptor 5 antagonists are a new of antiretroviral agents. (Gulick,2008). 2.)INTRODUCTION:- Maraviroc is in fact a name of a drug, which is the first of its kind in existence .Its name in scientific language is called chemokine receptor, it is a co-receptor which has been designed to interfere with its interaction with HIV (Harrison and lucas,2007) Its purpose as far as I have read is to actually block the interaction and prevent the CCR5 from going in to the cells of the body. Before we further discuss this newly developed drug, lets just quote the famous doctor john G .Gerber who is a professor of medical and pharmacology in Colorado, he stated in a conference held in Canada in April 2005 that, “The development of CCR5 HIV drug that specifically target virus resistant to first line therapics is very encouraging for the future of HIV therapy”(makadon,2007) This statement is very true, before many many people died of HIV, AIDS , they suffered in pain and humiliation and eventually died wrecked in severe pain. AIDS stands for acquired immune deficiency syndrome, it is caused by a virus called HIV ,which means human immunodeficiency virus. as soon as one gets infected by it ones body tries to make anti-bodies to fight the infection spreading in to the body. firstly one gets HIV then AIDS occurs much later on many don’t even get really sick till after many years of getting HIV. it is contracted by having sex with a already infected person or by sharing a needle which can be in the form of doing drugs or simply through a blood transfusion. Many new-born babies contract HIV through their mother and the carrier is breast milk, that’s why a women who already has HIV should never breast feed their child! (libman,makadon,2007) Even though this drug is by far no means eradicating HIV but it is in fact providing people a chance to live a bit longer then before and that to me is a achievement whether many people approve of this drug or not but it is at least a ray of hope that one day science will develop a cure that will completely heal people with HIV, this is at least a beginning in that direction. Let us now get in to the details of how maraviroc was tested , its various methods and the results which were derived out it. 3)-METHOD NUMBER 1- The test was conducted by two double-blind, placebo-controlled, phase 3 studies — Maraviroc versus Optimized Therapy in Viremic Antiretroviral Treatment-Experienced Patients (MOTIVATE) 1 and MOTIVATE 2 — with patients who had R5 human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) only. They had been treated with or had resistance to three antiretroviral-drug classes and had HIV-1 RNA levels of more than 5000 copies per milliliter. The patients participating were randomly assigned to one of three antiretroviral regimens consisting of maraviroc once daily, maraviroc twice daily, or placebo, each of which included optimized background therapy (OBT) based on treatment history and drug-resistance testing. The Safety and the efficacy were assessed after 48 weeks.(Highleyman,2008) 4)-RESULT- A total of 1049 patients received the randomly assigned study drug; the mean baseline HIV-1 RNA level was 72,400 copies per milliliter, and the median CD4 cell count was 169 per cubic millimeter. At 48 weeks, in both studies, the mean IV-1 RNA from baseline was greater with maraviroc than with placebo: –1.66 and –1.82 log10 copies per milliliter with the once-daily and twice-daily regimens, respectively, versus –0.80 with placebo in MOTIVATE 1, and –1.72 and –1.87 log10 copies per milliliter, respectively, versus –0.76 with placebo in MOTIVATE 2. More patients receiving maraviroc once or twice daily had HIV-1 RNA levels of less than 50 copies per milliliter (42% and 47%, respectively, vs. 16% in the placebo group in MOTIVATE 1; 45% in both maraviroc groups vs. 18% in MOTIVATE 2; P Read More