Question

A drug called AZT was the first to be used against HIV. While it worked initially, resistance developed quickly and the drug was no longer effective. Drug therapies used today, which often combine several different drugs into a cocktail that target different phases of the HIV life cycle, are much more effective over the long term than a single drug used in isolation

Please provide an evolutionary explanation for why these newer therapies work better.

Answer 1

Question

The AZT drug used to treat HIV as it is a reverse transcriptase inhibitor. It restrict the virus to replicate its genome inside the host body. But after some time, the virus have developed resistance against this drug. Today the HAART therapy also known as cocktail therapy is use to treat the AIDS patient. This therapy include two different drugs that disrupt HIV at different stages in the replication. The evolutionary significance of this therapy include it decreases the potential of the virus to get mutated because the combination of drug inhibit the HIV virus replication at various stages . Therefore virus have least chance to get mutate.