Treatment

HIV is treated by taking a combination of different medicines called antiretroviral drugs. Because no one HIV medicine will work by itself, it may take at least three different HIV medicines to help keep the HIV in your body under control. Taking several HIV medicines at once is called "combination therapy", "regimen", or a "drug cocktail".

Combination therapy combines medicines from different "families" that treat HIV in different ways. The basic "families" of HIV medicines are:

• NRTIs - (Nucleoside/nucleotide reverse transcriptase inhibitors, or "Nukes") stop HIV from making copies of itself early in the process
• NNRTIs - (Non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors, or "Non-nukes") like NRTIs, NNRTIs stop HIV from making copies of itself early on in the process, but in a slightly different way
• PIs - (Protease inhibitors) stop HIV from making new copies of itself by blocking the last step in the process, of which KALETRA is one type
• Fusion Inhibitors - stop HIV before it can enter and infect healthy CD4 T-cells.