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Background: Good quality of life is the expected goal of long-term treatment of HIV/AIDS patients. This quality of life can be influenced due to stigma of this disease. This stigma can affect psychic, loss of trust, work and patient social interaction. Objective: Determine the relationship between stigma and duration of HIV/AIDS therapy on the quality of life patients with HIV/AIDS at Sanglah General Hospital Denpasar. Methods: This was a cross sectional study with sampling of patients visiting the Sanglah General Hospital Denpasar VCT Clinic. The variable was assessed using Berger HIV Stigma Scale (HSS) and World Health Organization-Quality of Live HIV-BREF (WHOQOLHIV-BREF). Both of these instruments had been validated into Indonesian version. Data analysis using Pearson correlation to determine the correlation between stigma and duration of HIV/AIDS therapy on quality of life patients with HIV/AIDS. Results: A total of 76 patients were sampled with an average length of treatment for 53,66 months. There was a significant relationship between stigma on the quality of life patients (p=0,04, r=-0,229), while the duration of treatment did not affect the quality of life patients (p=0,61, r=0,059). Stigma correlates with the quality of life based on WHOQOLHIV-BREF, especially from the psychological aspect (p=0,007, r=-0,306) and social aspects (p=0,04, r=-0,232). Conclusion: Stigma was negatively correlated with the quality of life patients with HIV/AIDS. The higher the stigma experienced by patients, the lower the quality of life of these patients. The duration of patients underwent therapy did not relate to the quality of life patients with HIV/AIDS.

Glutamine is a conditionally essential amino acid required in numerous biological roles. These roles include serving as a building block in protein and deoxyribonucleic acid biosynthesis, as an energy source for adenosine triphosphate production, a requirement in cell proliferation, with roles in acid–base balance, ammonia buffering, immunomodulatory roles, and other roles still being discovered. Because of these biological roles, glutamine supplementation has been used in biological applications including post-surgery recovery, cancer treatments, AIDS therapy, and oral rehydration solutions for diarrhea. Glutamine has also been marketed as a general health supplement in sports nutrition to fight fatigue. While glutamine seems to help improve certain markers of fatigue, it does not necessarily help in actual sports performance. The dipeptide form of glutamine–alanine may be a more effective approach for a number of health situations. More research may help clarify formats and which applications glutamine supplementation is appropriate for.

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) remains a major health hazard despite significant advances in prevention and treatment of HIV infection. The major reason for the persistence of HIV/AIDS is the inability of existing treatments to clear or eradicate the multiple HIV reservoirs that exist in the human body. To suppress the virus replication and rebound, HIV/AIDS patients must take life-long antiviral medications. The clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated nuclease 9 (Cas9) system is an emerging gene-editing technique with the potential to eliminate or disrupt HIV-integrated genomes or HIV-infected cells from multiple HIV reservoirs, which could result in the complete cure of HIV/AIDS. Encouraging progress has already been reported for the application of the CRISPR/Cas9 technique to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention, both in vitro in human patient cells and in vivo in animal model experiments. In this review, we will summarize the most recent progress in the application of the CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technique to HIV/AIDS therapy and elimination. Future directions and trends of such applications are also discussed.

Adherence to antiretroviral treatment (ART) is critical for suppression of viral replication, repletion of CD4 cells, avoiding viral resistance, improving immune response and slowing HIV infection progression. This study sought to measure adherence to ART and to determine its associated sociodemographic, lifestyle and nutritional factors in HIV-infected adults taking antiretroviral (ARV). Using a cross-sectional study design, medical records of 991 HIV positive patients who started antiretroviral therapy from July, 1st 2011 to June, 30th 2012 were reviewed. Data were collected in 2014 in 46 HIV/AIDS therapy centers across Benin, The independent variables were sociodemographic, lifestyle, nutritional and therapeutic factors. The main dependent variable was the adherence to the ART. Chi-square test was used to determine the association between dependent and independent variables. A p-value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Out of 991 PWLHIV, 30.2% showed poor adherence to ARV. Factors associated with ART adherence were social network (p

AIDS first emerged decades ago; however, its cure, i.e., eliminating all virus sources, is still unachievable. A critical burden of AIDS therapy is the evasive nature of HIV-1 in face of host immune responses, the so-called “latency.” Recently, a promising approach, the “Shock and Kill” strategy, was proposed to eliminate latently HIV-1-infected cell reservoirs. The “Shock and Kill” concept involves two crucial steps: HIV-1 reactivation from its latency stage using a latency-reversing agent (LRA) followed by host immune responses to destroy HIV-1-infected cells in combination with reinforced antiretroviral therapy to kill the progeny virus. Hence, a key challenge is to search for optimal LRAs. Looking at epigenetics of HIV-1 infection, researchers proved that some bromodomains and extra-terminal motif protein inhibitors (BETis) are able to reactivate HIV-1 from latency. However, to date, only a few BETis have shown HIV-1-reactivating functions, and none of them have yet been approved for clinical trial. In this review, we aim to demonstrate the epigenetic roles of BETis in HIV-1 infection and HIV-1-related immune responses. Possible future applications of BETis and their HIV-1-reactivating properties are summarized and discussed.

In this paper, a new model describing the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-acquired immuno deficiency syndrome (AIDS) epidemic spread is proposed. The improvement with respect to the known models has been driven by recent results obtained from historical data collection and the suggestions given by the World Health Organization: the characteristics of the virus diffusion, mainly by body fluids, imply the trivial fact that wise behaviors of healthy subjects and fast timely recognition of a new positive diagnosis should reduce the spread quite fast. Therefore, the set of susceptible subjects is divided into two categories: the wise people that, suitably informed, avoid dangerous behaviors, and the ones that, with irresponsible acts, could get the infection. The set of infected subjects is constituted by people who are still not aware of being infected (and therefore are responsible of the HIV spread), along with the subjects aware of being infected by HIV or AIDS. Inspired by the international guidelines suggestions, three controls are introduced, aiming both at the prevention and at the cure: an informative campaign, a test campaign, and an HIV/AIDS therapy action. Among them, the core of the control effort is a fast HIV diagnosis. The equilibrium points, their stability, and the influences of the introduced inputs to the system behavior are studied, yielding to preliminary statements for prospective works on suitable control design approaches.

PurposeIn 1998, the AIDS Therapy Evaluation in the Netherlands (ATHENA) national observational HIV cohort was established to demonstrate the lifesaving effectiveness of triple combination antiretroviral therapy, including HIV-protease inhibitors, that had recently been made available for clinical use. Subsequently, the HIV Monitoring Foundation was established by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport to continue ATHENA as an open cohort in order to continue the registration and monitoring of all HIV-positive people as an integral part of HIV care in all 26 HIV treatment centres in the Netherlands.ParticipantsTo date, a total of 25 036 participants have been enrolled in the cohort, with 263 600 person-years of follow-up. As of 1 January 2017, 19 035 HIV-1-positive participants were known to be in care: 18 824 adults (81% men and 19% women) and 211 children (47% boys and 53% girls). The remaining 6001 participants had either died (46%), were lost to care (29%) or had moved abroad (25%).Findings to dateToday, with over 20 years of follow-up, the ATHENA cohort has provided extensive knowledge on HIV treatment, comorbidities and coinfections and created insight into the transmission dynamics of the HIV epidemic.Future plansATHENA continues to enrol and monitor HIV positive people entering HIV care in the Netherlands. Future research will continue to provide tangible input into HIV care and prevention policies in the Netherlands and internationally.

In the last two decades, HIV-1, the retrovirus associated with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), is globally one of the primary causes of morbidity and mortality. Unfortunately, existing approaches for interventions are not able to suppress the progression of infection due to this virus. Of the many obstacles, viral entry into the mono-nuclear phagocyte system encompassing monocytes/macrophages and dendritic cells is a major concern. Viral infection is also responsible for the subsequent distribution of the virus into various tissues throughout the organism. Tremendous progress has been made during the past few years to diagnose and treat patients with HIV/AIDS infection, yet much remains to be done. Recommended treatment involves long-term and multiple drug therapy that causes severe side effects. With almost 12% of the world population suffering from HIV/AIDS, better management of this global threat is highly desired. Nanostructured delivery systems hold promise for improving the situation. Such systems can facilitate the uptake of antiretroviral drugs, causing a considerable improvement in HIV/AIDS therapy. Nanoscale systems have intriguing potential to drastically improve existing HIV/AIDS diagnosis and treatment platforms. Nanosystems constitute a wide range of systems varying from polymeric nanoparticles, to solid-lipid nanoparticles, liposomes, micro- and nanoemulsions, dendrimers, and self-nanoemulsifying systems. Improved bioavailability, solubility, stability, and biocompatibility make them an ideal choice for delivery of antiretroviral drugs. The present review initially describes an updated bird's-eye view account of the literature. Then, we provide a relatively sententious overview on updated patents of recent nanostructured delivery systems for antiretroviral drugs. Finally, we discuss low-cost therapy (such as antioxidants and immune modulators) for the treatment and prevention of HIV/AIDS.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-01-28T16:56:28Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2014. Added 1 bitstream(s) on 2016-01-28T17:02:43Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 ISSN2231-2919-2014-04-06-722-730.pdf: 423397 bytes, checksum: 3845e1523dc6d1e40d4e6b1769f618e4 (MD5) Aims: Darunavir is widely used in HIV/AIDS therapy. It is a HIV protease inhibitor that has excellent efficacy against the virus. The aim of this study is to develop and validate an analytical method fast and free of interferences for determination of darunavir ethanolate as raw material and tablet dosage form. Methodology: As the formulation excipients show high interference in darunavir determination by a direct UV absorption measurement a derivative spectrophotometry was applied. A selective, easy and fast method was achieved employing simple and cheap instrumentation by using first-order derivative spectrophotometry. Results: The first-derivation of spectrum of the drug measured between 200 and 400 nm allowed identification of the analyte and showed absence of placebo interference. The assay was based on the absorbance at 276nm. The linear concentration range was established from 11 to 21 μg/mL. The intra-day and inter-day precision expressed as RSD was 0.06% and 3.75% respectively with mean recovery of 99.84%. Conclusion: The proposed analytical method is able to quantify darunavir as raw material and tablets and can be used routinely by any laboratory applying a spectrophotometer with a derivative accessory. The great difference of the method proposed here is that it proves to be free of placebo interferences as well as simple, fast and low cost. Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho, Departamento de Farmacos e Médicamentos, Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Araraquara, Araraquara, Rodovia Araraquara-Jaú, km1, Campus, CEP 14801-902, SP, Brasil Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho, Departamento de Farmacos e Médicamentos, Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas de Araraquara, Araraquara, Rodovia Araraquara-Jaú, km1, Campus, CEP 14801-902, SP, Brasil

Reverse transcriptase enzyme (RT) is an attractive target for the development of new drugs useful in AIDS therapy and HIV non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs), and offers the possibility of generating structures of increased potency. On this basis, a series of 4-oxo-3-phenyl-2- (phenylimino)thiazolidin-5-ylidene, 3-hydroxypropyl, 3-azidopropyl, and 3-aminopropyl derivatives of 1-benzyl-2-ethyl-4-nitroimidazoles 6-8, as well as the substituted 1,2,3-triazolo analogs 12-14, the diazepam 15 and carboxamide derivatives 16 and 17 were synthesized. All compounds have been evaluated for their anti-HIV activity

Zidovudine (AZT) is commonly used to treat patients with AIDS, but it is limited by toxicity and high dosing needs. Alternative formulations have been proposed to overcome these drawbacks. The objective of this study was to evaluate process-related variables like hydration and sonication time, rotation speed of evaporation flask, and the effects of charge-inducing agent and centrifugation on zidovudine entrapment and release from niosomes. Formulation of zidovudine niosomes was optimized by altering the proportions of Tween, Span and cholesterol. The effect of process–related variables like hydration time, sonication time, charge-inducing agent, centrifugation and rotational speed of evaporation flask on zidovudine entrapment and release from niosomes was evaluated. The effect of changes in osmotic shock and viscosity were also evaluated. Non-sonicated niosomes were in the size range of 2-3.5 μm and sonicated niosomes formulated with Tween 80 and dicetylphosphate (DCP) had a mean diameter of 801 nm. Zidovudine niosomes formulated with Tween 80 entrapped high amounts of drug and the addition of DCP enhanced drug release for a longer time (88.72% over 12 h). The mechanism of release from Tween 80 formulation was the Fickian type and obeyed first-order release kinetics. Niosomes can be formulated by proper adjustment of process parameters to enhance zidovudine entrapment and sustainability of release. These improvements in zidovudine formulation may be useful in developing a more effective AIDS therapy.

The lack of an efficacious HIV-1 vaccine and the continued emergence of drug-resistant HIV-1 strains have pushed the research community to explore novel avenues for AIDS therapy. Over the last decade, one new avenue that has been realized involves cellular HIV-1 restriction factors, defined as host cellular proteins or factors that restrict or inhibit HIV-1 replication. Many of these factors are interferon-induced and inhibit specific stages of the HIV-1 lifecycle that are not targeted by current AIDS therapies. Our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying HIV-1 restriction is far from complete, but our current knowledge of these factors offers hope for the future development of novel therapeutic ideas.

The constant development of new drugs against HIV-1 is necessary due to global expansion of AIDS and HIV-1 drug resistance. Nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors of HIV-1 (NNRTIs) are potentially effective and nontoxic drugs in AIDS therapy. The crystal structures of six nonnucleoside inhibitors of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) derivatives of N-benzyl-benzimidazole are reported here. The investigated compounds belong to the group of so called “butterfly like” inhibitors with characteristic two π-electron moieties with an angled orientation. The structural data show the influence of the substituents of the benzimidazole ring on the geometry of the molecule and correlation between the structure of the inhibitor and its biological activity.

Antiviral inhibitors of HIV-1 protease are a notable success of structure-based drug design and have dramatically improved AIDS therapy. Analysis of the structures and activities of drug resistant protease variants has revealed novel molecular mechanisms of drug resistance and guided the design of tight-binding inhibitors for resistant variants. The plethora of structures reveals distinct molecular mechanisms associated with resistance: mutations that alter the protease interactions with inhibitors or substrates; mutations that alter dimer stability; and distal mutations that transmit changes to the active site. These insights will inform the continuing design of novel antiviral inhibitors targeting resistant strains of HIV.

The virally encoded protease is an important drug target for AIDS therapy. Despite the potency of the current drugs, infections with resistant viral strains limit the long-term effectiveness of therapy. Highly resistant variants of HIV protease from clinical isolates have different combinations of about 20 mutations and several orders of magnitude worse binding affinity for clinical inhibitors. Strategies are being explored to inhibit these highly resistant mutants. The existing inhibitors can be modified by introducing groups with the potential to form new interactions with conserved protease residues, and the flexible flaps. Alternative strategies are discussed, including designing inhibitors to bind to the open conformation of the protease dimer, and inhibition of the protease-catalyzed processing of the Gag-Pol precursor.

The replicative cycle of HIV presents several events. The proteins involved in these events can be anticipated as pharmacological targets, aiming to the development of anti viral agents. Presently, there are fifteen commercially available anti-HIV drugs, which act at substrate binding site of reverse transcriptase (zidovudine, didanosine, zalcitabine, stavudine, lamivudine and abacavir), at a non-substrate binding site of reverse transcriptase (nevirapine, delavirdine and efavirenz), or by inhibiting HIV protease activity (saquinavir, ritonavir, indinavir, nelfinavir, amprenavir and lopinavir). The present review focus both on these established classes of drugs and on new classes of compounds acting on other virus specific steps.

This paper reviews recent statistical advances in HIV/AIDS therapy trials. Our emphasis is on three emerging areas that address key challenges in AIDS research: the determination of optimal treatment sequences, estimating efficacy of intended treatment, and inference for repeated measures with dependent censoring. A common theme of these topics is the use of observational data within clinical trials to answer questions not addressed by the conventional intent-to-treat analysis. We also give a brief overview of some recent contributions to other topics relevant to AIDS clinical trials, including modelling of treatment compliance data, modelling of repeated measures, and group sequential testing.

The separation principle and the advantage of using magnetic polymer particles in bioseparation is elucidated. After a short review of the presently used diverse magnetic microparticles as well as the basic differences of micro- and nanosized magnetic particles with regards to their physical properties in bio-separation, preparation and application of novel magnetic microparticles prepared from polyvinylalcohol are described. The performance of the novel product and their superior properties over established products in diverse bioseparation tests are shown. Furthermore, nanoparticles used for a new AIDS therapy approach are described. The basic principle is explained by which the AIDS virus (HIV) is destroyed through heat generated by inductively heated magnetic nanoparticles, which are specifically attached to the virus. Inductive heating tests with model magnetic colloids show that the required temperatures of > 50°C can easily be achieved.

HIV-1 RT is an important target for the treatment of AIDS. There are two major classes of antiviral agents that inhibit HIV-1 RT have been identified, nucleoside RT inhibitors (NRTIs) and non-nucleoside RT inhibitors (NNRTIs). In this report, a noval class of non-nucleoside compound with potential RT inhibitory activity were found from the traditional Chinese medicines database (TCMD) using a combination of virtual screening, docking, molecular dynamic simulations, where results were ranked by scoring function of the docking tool. The result indicates that M4753 (a compound derived from TCMD) has not only the lowest bonding energy but also the best match in geometric conformation with the forthcoming NNRTIs. Accordingly M4753 might possibly become a promising lead compound of NNRTIs for AIDS therapy.

AIDS (acquired immune deficient syndrome) is a human infectious disease. AIDS patients, if not be treated, commonly suffer a gradual loss of human immune-defensive functions and finally die of infectious complications within 2 years after AIDS symptoms occur in patients. AIDS patients can be treated with a series of anti-viral drugs to decrease the virus-load and slow the pace of deadest symptoms of AIDS and prolong life-spans of patients by high active anti-retroviral therapy (HAART). Even though HAART is very effective, HIV/AIDS patients can not be cured by HAART. And there are a lot of drawbacks in this therapy. Many new ways have been designed for HIV/AIDS therapy. In this editorial, we will address these challenges and treatment options to possible cure all HIV/AIDS patients.

Reverse transcriptase enzyme (RT) is an attractive target for the development of new drugs useful in AIDS therapy and HIV non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NNRTIs), and offers the possibility of generating structures of increased potency. On this basis, a series of 4-oxo-3-phenyl-2(phenylimino)thiazolidin-5-ylidene, 3-hydroxypropyl, 3-azidopropyl, and 3-aminopropyl derivatives of 1-benzyl-2-ethyl-4-nitroimidazoles 6‐8, as well as the substituted 1,2,3-triazolo analogs 12‐14, the diazepam 15 and carboxamide derivatives 16 and 17 were synthesized. All compounds have been evaluated for their anti-HIV activity.

Despite phenomenal advances in AIDS therapy transforming the disease into a chronic illness for most patients, a routine cure for HIV infections remains a distant goal. However, a recent example of HIV eradication in a patient who had received CCR5-negative bone marrow cells after full-body irradiation has fuelled new hopes for a cure for AIDS. Here, we review new HIV treatment strategies that use sophisticated genome engineering to target HIV infections. These approaches offer new ways to tackle the infection, and alone or in conjunction with already established treatments, promise to transform HIV into a curable disease.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection causes Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), while its ape and monkey progenitor Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV) does not cause AIDS in its nonhuman primate natural reservoir hosts. Astonishingly, AIDS is avoided despite findings in a number of these host primate species indicating they too harbor high levels of virus replication that kills off CD4 T cells. These primate species that are so called “natural hosts” of SIV, essentially have HIV without ever getting AIDS. The elucidation of the exact mechanisms allowing natural SIV hosts to avoid disease progression may prove decisive in the battle to understand HIV pathogenesis for the purpose of preventative or curative HIV and AIDS therapy. Comparative studies in natural and nonnatural hosts of lentiviral infections (i.e. HIV or SIV) have defined essential distinguishing features, opening up new avenues for possible therapeutic and preventative intervention. In this chapter, we will describe recent and past breakthroughs that come from comparing lentiviral infections in AIDS-free natural hosts, to immunocompromised nonnatural hosts. In addition, we will discuss how the knowledge derived from the study of natural hosts may inform the design of novel therapies and vaccine strategies for HIV-infected humans.

The advent of antiretroviral therapy (ART) for treatment of HIV has significantly delayed HIV-related disease progression, allowing those infected to live longer without opportunistic infections. To some extent, HIV has become a chronic disease requiring long-term treatment with multidrug regimens. A probability model of the survival benefit of AIDS therapy in the USA demonstrated that the projected perperson survival after a diagnosis of AIDS increased 13.3 years from 19 months with no available treatment to 14.9 years in 2003 [1]. However, risks associated with ART pose challenges to patient care.

What kind of peptide sequences can be cleaved by HIV protease, and what kind cannot be? This is a crucially important problem in designing effective inhibitors against HIV protease as potential drugs for AIDS therapy. To tackle this problem, a sequence-coupling and vectorized model is proposed for predicting the cleavability of oligopeptides by proteases with multiple and extended specificity subsites. In comparison with existing methods, the new method has proved to be an improvement in both the accuracy of the model and the rationality of the statistical treatment. Meanwhile, the Monte Carlo sampling procedure introduced here has also proved to be very useful in dealing with the situation when the experimental data are insufficiently sampled for complete statistics. Owing to its very high rate of correct prediction, it is expected that the new method can be a useful technique for helping to find effective inhibitors of HIV protease, which is one of the targets in designing potential drugs against AIDS. The principle of the new method can also be applied to analyzing the specificity of any multi-subsite enzyme.

This paper examines the special issues and problems in the co-leadership relationship which arise in ongoing AIDS therapy and support groups. A brief review is given outlining some of the advantages and disadvantages of the coleader model. Specific attention is then paid to the issues/themes of physical deterioration of members, disfigurement, frequent absences, and members dying. Four particular patterns of interaction that develop between cotherapists are identified, illustrated, and discussed.

HIV-1 protease remains a promising target for the treatment of AIDS, and research continues in many laboratories to exploit a knowledge of the structure of the protease and its interactions with inhibitors in the development of an AIDS therapy. Structures of HIV-1 protease in complex with peptide-based inhibitors continue to be reported, and recently structures have appeared for a number of compounds that are not fundamentally peptidyl in nature, compounds that were identified as inhibitors either by screening methods or by structure-based database searches. Three structures of the closely related HIV-2 protease in complex with peptide-based inhibitors have now also been determined.

A set of new pyrimido[5,4-b]indole derivatives that are structurally related to some non-nucleside HIV-1 reverse transcriptase inhibitors were synthesized and biologically evaluated for their activity as inhibitors of wild and mutant HIV-1 RT types in an 'in vitro' recombinant HIV-1 RT screening assay, as well as anti-infectives in HLT4lacZ-1IIIB cells. Preliminary structure-activity relationships suggest that activity is promoted by simultaneous substitution in positions 2 and 4, especially when chains of alkyldiamine type are present, and by electron-releasing substituents (methoxy) in positions 7 and 8. The inactivity or the very low activity of title derivatives does not suggest interest in AIDS therapy.

The HIV-1 nucleocapsid protein NCp7, which contains two highly conserved zinc fingers, is being used as a novel target for AIDS therapy due to its pivotal role in viral replication and its mutationally intolerant nature. Herein we report a new class of NCp7 inhibitors that possess good antiviral activity with low cellular toxicity.

More than a dozen of hybrid proteins possessing reactivity with human immunodeficiency virus-type 1-(HIV-1) infected cells and cytotoxicity have been produced and studied by several groups. These proteins are prepared either by chemical cross-linking of a toxin and a carrier molecule or by expressing fused genes of the two moieties. These cytotoxic agents have been investigated to eliminate HIV-1-infected cells in vitro. The ID50 of these agents range from pM to nM. This article compares the results of the various approaches and discusses the limits and potential of immunoconjugates for AIDS therapy.

Pools of latent HIV, lurking in the cells of infected people, remain untouched even by powerful drug combinations. Paul Smaglik reports on how this is forcing researchers to rethink their strategies for fighting the virus.

Preface. Contributors. 1.Study of Inhibitors Against SARS Coronavirus by Computational Approaches Kuo-Chen Chou, Dong-Qing Wei, Qi-Shi Du, Suzanne Sirois, Hong-Bin Shen and Wei-Zhu Zhon. 2. HIV-1 Protease and AIDS Therapy Irene T. Weber, Ying Zhang, and Jozsef Tozser. 3. Hepatitis C Virus Philip Tedbury and Mark Harris. 4. Antiviral Activity of Proteasome Inhibitors/Cytomegalovirus Marion Kaspari and Elke Bogner. 5. Rational Drug Design of HTLV-I Protease Inhibitors Jeffrey-Tri Nguyen and Yoshiaki Kiso. 6. Picornaviruses David Neubauer, Jutta Steinberger, and Tim Skern. Index.

Agaritine, or beta-N-[gamma-L(+)-glutamyl]-4-hydroxymethylphenylhydrazine, is a Chinese herbal medicine, known having the antiviral and anticancer function. However, so far no reports whatsoever have been made for its potential as an anti-HIV agent. It was observed by docking experiments for more than 9,000 compounds extracted from various Chinese medicines that the compound agaritine distinguished itself from all the others in binding to the HIV protease with the most favorable free energy. Based on this, a series of derivatives were generated by modifying agaritine. It has been observed thru an extensive docking study that some of agaritine derivatives had markedly stronger binding interaction with the HIV protease than agaritine, suggesting that these derivatives might be good candidates for developing drugs for AIDS therapy.

HIV/AIDS will be one of the greatest challenges in public health in this century. Nowadays the treatment and prevention of AIDS have become one of the most important research areas in the life science. Although there are many ways of therapy available, the therapeutic effects are not definitive. Thus, to achieve individual therapy of AIDS, the evaluation of these therapies becomes necessary. In this passage, using the data of ACTG320 group, we applied grey system theory to construct GM (1, 1) model. Taking into account of both the level of CD4 cells and HIV viral load, we defined K ( i,t ) as the curative effect index and evaluating the treatment. By running the program in Matlab, we estimate the best time frame to withdrawal the drugs for each patient and conclude that for most patients, the best time frame of withdrawal or change to use other drugs is from 20 to 40 weeks after the administration of the drug. Then we analyzed the data of 193A group to evaluate the therapeutic effect of the 4 groups of patients. We divided the patients into two groups: one is the young groups, the other is the old group, and the criterion is 50 year's old. We did this to reduce the affect of age on the therapeutic effect. In each age group, we used the treatment time and the dosage of drugs of four group patients as training sample input the neural network model to standardize the level of CD4 cells after treatment to evaluate the therapy methods in 193A. To remove the random errors which the neural network model brings into the process of solving, we predict the curative effect of the best therapy of each age group using time series model and run a program in SAS. To better apply our analysis into practice, we modify our goal programming model by Lingo software considering the price of the drugs. We concluded that compare with the therapy of reduce the type of drugs, reducing the dose is the better choice for the young patients when they are not in a good economic condition.