The researchers on Sunday informed that a group of natural AIDS medicines used to cure HIV in Africa and other poor areas may initiate premature aging and cause diseases related to age like heart disease and dementia.

British analysts found in an experiment in the journal Nature Genetics that the medicines called as nucleoside analog reverse-transcriptase inhibitors, or NRTIs, injure DNA in the mitochondria of the patient. Mitochondria are the “batteries” which regulate the cells.

The researchers told that it was not that the AIDS medicines manufactured by the companies like Gilead, Merck, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline will injure at the same level because they are less harmful for the mitochondria. More studies are required to be sure about this fact.

“It takes time for these side effects to become apparent, so there is a question mark about the future and whether or not the newer drugs will cause this problem,” Patrick Chinnery of the Institute of Genetic Medicine at Newcastle University told in a telephonic interview. “They are probably less likely to, but we don’t know because we haven’t had time to see.”

The scientists told that the results clarify the reason of indications of aging and diseases like heart disease and dementia in early age in the patients contaminated with HIV when they are administered older antiretroviral AIDS medicines.

“The DNA in our mitochondria gets copied throughout our lifetimes and, as we age, naturally accumulates errors,” said Chinnery, who headed the study.

“We believe these HIV drugs accelerate the rate at which these errors build up. So over the space of, say, 10 years, a person’s mitochondrial DNA may have accumulated the same amount of errors as a person who has naturally aged 20 or 30 years.”

NRTI medicines- the best is AZT, also called zidovudine and initially made by GSK- were a major progress in HIV healing when they were first introduced in 1980s. It increased the life span of the patient and transformed HIV to a controllable chronic disease from a death verdict.

The worry about the NRTIs being harmful, mainly while being taken for a long term denotes that these medicines are now less utilized in rich countries. Here it is substituted by fresh and costly combination of AIDS medicines that have less side-effect.

In poor counries, the accessibility to less costly general medicines is frequently the only choice for patients affected with HIV to get cure, NRTIs are broadly used.

A probable of 33.3 million people were affected in the whole world by the HIV virus which caused AIDS in 2009, on the basis of the recent information by United Nations and 22.5 million such people of Africa.

“These drugs may not be perfect, but we must remember that when they were introduced they gave people an extra 10 or 20 years when they would otherwise have died,” told Brendan Payne of Newcastle’s Royal Victoria Infirmary, who also researched the topic.

“In Africa, where the HIV epidemic has hit hardest and where more expensive medications are not an option, they are an absolute necessity.”

In their research, the group of Chinnery examined muscle cells of adults infected with HIV; some had already been given NRTIs. They came to know that the patients who were given NRTIs even 10 years before had spoilt mitochondria same as that of a healthy old person.

The examiners are now finding methods to mend or halt the damaging effect of the medicines and are of the belief that paying attention to exercise might assist – which has a positive effect on the patients of mitochondrial disease.