AUSHADHI CHIKITSA

Zidovudine (AZT) Zidovudine is an effective anti-viral drug that acts on retroviruses especially human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). It is not preferred 1st line antiviral drug according to regimen 2016 of WHO.  Zidovudine belongs to nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors class of anti-retroviral drugs. The therapeutic dose of zidovudine for adults is 300 mg and 180 mg per meter square for children. Zidovudine is also known as AZT due to its usage as a thymidine analogue. Mechanism of action(MOA):- Zidovudine when administered, get phosphorylation in the host cell and converted into zidovudine triphosphate. The zidovudine triphosphate selectively inhibits viral reverse transcriptase in preference to DNA polymerase. AZT inhibits HIV reverse transcription by replacing thymidine from DNA formed by the reverse transcription process and results in changing of the base sequence of DNA, which makes it an inactive DNA and stops further DNA reverse transcription. Thus zidovudin

Actinomycin D Actinomycin D is an antibiotic that has potent anti-neoplastic properties. Actinomycin D is also known as Dactinomycin. Dactinomycin is an effective anti-cancerous drug used for the treatment of Wilm's tumor and rhabdomyosarcoma.  Dactinomycin is also effective against certain types of testicular and ovarian cancer. It is also found to be effective against Ewing's sarcoma and metastatic testicular carcinoma. For the cure of choriocarcinoma, dactinomycin is used with combination of methotrexate. Dactinomycin shows its action by causing single-strand breakage of DNA and by blocking RNA transcription due to its interference with template function of DNA. Thus dactinomycin helps in the inhibition of DNA replication and transcription of carcinogenic cells and stops their uncontrolled growth. Dactinomycin is produced by fermentation of Streptomyces parvulus. The structure of dactinomycin contains phenoxazone chromophore and two cyclic peptide chains. The

Written by Drx Gurujeet Jaiswal.