HIV Drugs and the HIV Lifecycle
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HIV drugs cannot cure HIV but they can help you stay healthy by preventing the virus from reproducing (making copies of itself). When HIV cannot reproduce, it cannot infect new cells in your body and your . viral load remains low.
HIV must go through a number of different steps in order to make copies of itself. This is called the HIV lifecycle. All HIV drugs work by interrupting a step in HIV's lifecycle, thereby stopping HIV "in its tracks."
Once HIV is in the body, it targets and infects a certain type of white blood cell called a CD4 cell. HIV then takes over or "hijacks" these cells and turns them into factories that produce thousands of copies of the virus. The steps HIV goes through to complete this process are as follows:
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