With the advent of combination antiretroviral chemotherapy to combat HIV disease has come increased awareness by both physicians and patients of the potential hazards of drug interactions.
Drugs can affect one another, rendering some less potent and making others too powerful.
And, one of the principal mechanisms of drug interaction involves the cytochrome P450 enzymes. This article provides a simplified description of these enzymes and how they work, as well as a brief discussion of their relevance to anti-HIV drug therapy. After administering these agents to laboratory animals, they noted in many instances that the chemicals were quickly converted into forms that were less toxic and could be easily eliminated from the body. At about that same time, scientists studying the activity of different types of drugs were finding the same thing in humans. Many of these substances also were being chemically altered before elimination.