What you probably don't know is how HIV works once it's inside a body's fluid. HIV is a retrovirus. In plain English, HIV contains instructions for replicating itself but not the independent means for replicating itself. So what it does to survive is hook onto another cell (by attaching itself to certain enzymes), translate and feed the instructions to that cell, and then get the cell to produce the parts (virons) that will be assembled into more HIV cells. It's like a computer reprogamming robots so that they build computers. For some not so plain English, check out this definition from Wikipedia: "a retrovirus is any virus belonging to the viral family Retroviridae. They are enveloped viruses possessing a RNA genome, and replicate via a DNA intermediate. Retroviruses rely on the enzyme reverse transcriptase to perform the reverse transcription of its genome from RNA into DNA, which can then be integrated into the host's genome with an integrase enzyme."

Treatment

What you probably already know is that as of the publication of this article, there is no cure for HIV/AIDS. Instead, people infected with the disease [in first world countries with adequate health insurance... but that's a whole other Big Mouth moment] enter into treatment in hopes of adequately managing the disease with a regiment of drugs. Since the mid-'90's these cocktails have managed to prevent the disease from fully developing in HIV-positive individuals, keeping them in a limbo of early HIV infection with undetectable viral loads and strong immune systems.

What you probably don't know is how the cocktails work and, consequently, why two new HIV drug classes are a significant step toward making HIV/AIDS more manageable. Unable to cure/kill the virus so far, scientists have developed drugs that stop HIV's replication at various stages. The drugs are classified/classed based on the stage in which they interrupt the virus replication process. For example the three classes of drugs on the market stop the virus these three different ways:

1. by stopping HIV from hooking onto host cells;
2. by stopping HIV from producing readable replication instructions for the host cell; and
3. by stopping HIV from creating a protein that hooks the virons together into new HIV cells.

The drug treatment cocktails are different combinations of different drugs from these three classes. By stopping HIV replication in so many ways, people can now live with AIDS for a much longer time than in the pre-cocktail years. Unfortunately, HIV evolves rapidly and can become resistant to the drugs in these classes. But, as the New York Times article states, there are two new classes that may hit the market soon, which stop the virus in these ways:

1. by stopping HIV from feeding it's replication instructions to the cell, and
2. by hooking a molecule onto the part of the cell that serves as an entrypoint for HIV - basically, blocking the door.

At this point, I should probably point out that all of these drugs have serious side effects and that HIV can become resistant to any of them at any point in the future. So people responding well to the current three-class and the potential five-class versions of the cocktails could still develop AIDS or other health complications originating from the treatment drugs. Consequently, HIV/AIDS is not considered a cured or managed disease.

So there it is! For more information about HIV/AIDS, it's treatment, and research, check out the websites for AmFAR (the American Foundation for AIDS Research) and POZ Magazine. And, if you have any information you'd like to share with the Big Queer community about HIV/AIDS, please post a comment below.