- Why does understanding reverse transcriptase matter for treating HIV?
HIV/AIDS
The virus, epidemic, and treatment of HIV/AIDS.
- How many AIDS cases and deaths had been recorded in the United States by the end of 1981?
- What was still unknown about AIDS at the time of this first report, including its cause and transmission routes?
- What tissue did Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier use to isolate the retrovirus that would later be renamed HIV?
- What was the virus originally named before it became known as HIV?
- Why did identifying the specific retrovirus behind AIDS matter even though it didn't immediately produce a treatment?
- How long after the 1983 isolation did Montagnier and Barré-Sinoussi receive the Nobel Prize?
- Why was AZT originally synthesized in 1964, and why was it shelved before its use against HIV was discovered?
- How fast was the FDA's review of AZT in 1987, and why was that speed unusual?
- How did AZT's launch price shape the patient advocacy movement around pharmaceutical pricing?
- In what sense did AZT prove that HIV could be pharmacologically attacked, even without curing the disease?
- What was the true underlying cause of Asimov's death, and how did he contract it?
- What does HIV's protease enzyme do, and why does blocking it stop the virus?
- What is HAART, and why did combining three drug classes work better than any single drug?
- What combination of drugs was presented at the 1996 Vancouver AIDS conference, and how effective was it at suppressing HIV?
- Why did the new triple-drug regimen mark a shift from AIDS as a fatal disease to a manageable one?
- How did Barré-Sinoussi and Montagnier isolate the retrovirus that would be confirmed as HIV?
- How did the discovery of HIV change AIDS from a fatal diagnosis into a manageable condition?
- How much did early antiretroviral therapy reduce HIV transmission between serodiscordant couples?
- Why was the HPTN 052 trial halted early?
- How did this trial change the strategic logic of HIV prevention programs?