March: AZT

21 years ago on March 20th, 1987 AZT was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration as a treatment for HIV/AIDS.  Originally developed 2 decades previously as a possible treatment for cancer, AZT was found to be an effective inhibitor of HIV/AIDS.

UNAIDS and the World Health Organization estimate that more than 25 million people have died as a result of HIV/AIDS since 1981.

The history of the development of anti-viral drugs goes back to the 1960s.  However, it wasn't until the 1980s when the genetic sequences of viruses began to be unravelled that researchers began to learn how viruses worked in detail.

HIV/AIDS severely compromises the immune system of the person infected.  The first and most significant step in the history and study of immunology came with the first demonstration of the smallpox vaccination by Edward Jenner in 1798.

One of the RSCs oldest publications on the subject of medicine and disease is:

'Oriatrike or physick refined: The common errors therein refuted, and the whole art reformed and rectified: being a new rise and progress of philosophy and medicine for the destruction of diseases and prolongation of life' by John Baptist van Helmont (1662).