What is combination therapy?

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Combination therapy is the term for using 3 or more drugs to treat HIV.

It is also called triple or quadruple therapy or HAART (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Therapy). HIV drugs are also called ARVs.

There are now at least five different types of drugs that work at different stages of the HIV life cycle.

Types of HIV drugs.

HIV lifecycle – how drugs work in different ways

Each CD4 cell is used to produce hundreds of copies of HIV. Different drugs block different parts of the HIV lifecycle.

• entry inhibitors work by stopping HIV getting into the CD4 cell
• nukes & non-nukes drugs stop HIV changing from a single strand of RNA into a double strand of DNA
• integrase inhibitors block HIV from being 'integrated' into the cell's DNA
• protease inhibitors block new HIV from being cut into the right size proteins and this prevents new virus from being infectious

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This is the web edition of the i-Base guide Introduction to combination therapy. This guide is available in UK clinics. You can order free printed copies or download a PDF version (516 Kb). Translations. Authors and credits. Glossary. Full section index.

Decisions relating to your treatment should always be taken in consultation with your doctor. Information in this guide is intended to support those discussions.