HIV therapeutic possibilities of gold compounds

Abstract

Highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has resulted in decreased mortality and morbidity from the acquired immune deficiency syndrome caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Drug resistance and toxicity of HAART has led to the search for novel inhibitors of HIV infection. Gold-based compounds have shown promising activity against a wide range of clinical conditions and microorganism infections including HIV-1. A typical example is auranofin which resulted in an elevated CD4? T-cell count in an HIV patient being treated for psoriatic arthritis. In addition, reports exist on gold-based inhibitors of reverse transcriptase (RT), protease (PR) and viral entry of host cells. These and other characteristics of goldbased HIV drugs are reviewed here.

New bis(thiosemicarbazonate) gold(III) complexes inhibit HIV replication at cytostatic concentrations: Potential for incorporation into virostatic cocktails

“…Gold starting material, HAuCl 4 .4H 2 O, was synthesised using procedures reported by Block, 1953 [27] and bis(thiosemicarbazone) ligands (L1-L4) according to methods by West et al, 1997 [28]. All the solvents were purchased from Merck and dried using conventional methods.…”

Hyphenated techniques as tools for speciation analysis of metal-based pharmaceuticals: developments and applications

“…A further promising new area of application for goldbased drugs was recently reported by Fonteh et al and Lewis et al, who obtained initial promising results when gold(I) phosphine compounds were applied against HIV [106][107][108]. The potential of gold as a novel therapeutic approach for autism was recently highlighted [109].…”

The biological activity of auranofin: implications for novel treatment of diseases

“…Unfortunately, anti-retroviral therapy often has severe side effects and does nothing to eliminate the viral reservoir in patients. Thus, the key to curing HIV would need to include eradicating the virus from the body (Fonteh et al 2010). The persistence of HIV in treated patients is partially due to the infection of short-term memory CD4 ?…”

“…T cells by inhibiting lymphoblastogenesis, and this low CD4 ? T cell count is often an indication of the severity of the disease and is correlated with poor survival outcomes (Shapiro and Masci 1996;Fonteh et al 2010). The first report indicating that AF may be useful in the treatment of HIV was by Shapiro and Masci (1996), who reported that in an HIV-infected patient treated with AF for psoriatic arthritis, the psoriatic arthritis symptoms improved but remarkably the patient's CD4 ?…”