Question

What is AZT? Write its use?

Answer 1

The full form of AZT is azidothymidine which is also called as zidovudine is a type of drug which is used to delay the development of AIDS in the patients which are affected by HIV(human immunodeficiency virus). The group of drugs from where AZT belongs is known as nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors.

Complete answer:
From your chemistry lessons you have learned about the AZT and its uses in the delay of AIDS.
The full form of AZT is azidothymidine which is also called as zidovudine is a type of drug which is used to delay the development of AIDS in the patients which are affected by HIV(human immunodeficiency virus). The group of drugs from where AZT belongs is known as nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors.
In 1987 AZT was the first drug which was approved by the U.S. Food and drug administration for increasing the lifespan of those patients who are suffering from AIDS (Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome). AZT only works on HIV, when the replication of a virus is going on into proviral DNA . Proviral DNA means those viral DNA which is synthesised prior to the integration in the host DNA.
This happens because the active compounds present in AZT that is Zidovudine-5-triphosphate has a high affinity with the enzyme known as reverse transcriptase which is used by the retroviruses like HIV to replicate the viral single stranded RNA to proviral double stranded DNA.
Thus AZT is the drug which is used to delay the development of AIDS.

Note:
The structure of Zidovudine-5-triphosphate is very much similar in structure with thymidine triphosphate but the affinity of zidovudine-5-phosphate is high for enzyme reverse transcriptase than the thymidine triphosphate. AZT also partially blocks the activity of some of the human polymerase enzymes in which it also includes mitochondrial DNA polymerase.