Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Study group discussion: Zidovudine

Review questions!

Full form of HAART?

Highly active anti retroviral therapy.

Which is more toxic.. Zidovudine or acyclovir? And why?

Zidovudine due to bone marrow suppression.

Yes! It causes BM suppression.

Actually, both of these drugs cause it..but zidovudine causes it at a much severe level.
Acyclovir and zidovudine have to be activated to their respective triphosphate. Zidovudine uses the host cell enzymes for this but acyclovir uses the viral enzyme FIRST and then the host cell enzyme. Hence in cases of zidovudine the toxicity is very high.

Wow what a concept!

The myelosuppression is so bad.. That you have to give blood transfusion and growth factors.

It effects the mitochondria of the cells too I guess.

AZT induces significant toxic effects in humans exposed to therapeutic doses...
Cytogenetic observations on H9-AZT cells showed an increase in chromosomal aberrations and nuclear fragmentation when compared with unexposed H9 cells...
The toxicities explored here suggest that the mechanisms of AZT induced cytotoxicity in bone marrow of the patients chronically exposed to the drug in vivo may involve both chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA damage.

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