Patients with AIDS often acquire opportunistic infections. Imagine a patient wit

Question

Patients with AIDS often acquire opportunistic infections. Imagine a patient with AIDS (caused by human immunodeficiency virus) and two additional opportunistic infections a respiratory disease caused by a Mycobacterium and another disease caused by the fungus Candida. As the patient's physician, you need to prescribe drugs to counteract the infections. Given the normal anatomical and functional characteristics of each disease organism, what characteristics should a drug combination have to treat each of these three infections while doing the least harm to the patient? Activity 31.1

Explanation / Answer

AIDS is caused by HIV (human immuno deficiency virus). It lowers the immunity if the individual and so opportunistic infections can occur. For example, Mycobacterium avium can affect the lungs and Candida, a fungi can affect the mucous membrane if the oral cavity.

Mycobacterium is treated using clarithromycin or ethambutol. Candida can be treated usually by clotrimazole or Nystatin. The drug combinations should specifically target the causative organism without causing much damage to the host.

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