Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: AZT |
AZTNoun1. An antiviral drug used in the treatment of AIDS; adverse side effects include liver damage and suppression of the bone marrow. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
| The following table is compiled from various sources, across various languages. When English abbreviations or acronyms come from a non-English source, this is noted. | |||
| Entry | Source | Expression | Field |
AZT | Dutch | Azidothyamidine | Medicine |
AZT | English | Azidothymidine | Medicine |
AZT | Finnish | Tsidovudiini | Medicine |
AZT | German | Aschheim-Zondek-Test | Medicine |
AZT | Greek | αζιδιοθυμιδίνη | Medicine |
AZT | Italian | Zidovudina | Medicine |
AZT | Spanish | Azidotimidina | Medicine |
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |||
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
AZT was originally developed to treat cancer, at a time when it was thought that cancer was caused by a retrovirus. This premise is not as odd as it may sound today, avian cancers are caused by viruses, and it was thought that the mammalian version simply hadn't been found yet. A considerable amount of research was put into discovering ways to block this virus once it was found. By the 1970s the viral premise of cancer was coming under increased scrutiny and most such research ended.
Jerome Horowitz first synthesized the drug in 1964, under a US National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant. When the viral premise was dropped, AZT essentially disappeared. Years later in February 1985, NIH's Hiroaki Mitsuya demonstrated the drug's effectiveness against HIV, due to its ability to block the action of the "reverse transcriptase" enzyme that HIV uses to replicate its RNA for splicing into the DNA of a target cell.
The formula soon purchased by Burroughs-Wellcome (now GlaxoSmithKline), which filed for a patent on AZT in 1986. The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug for use against HIV on March 20, 1987, and then as a preventative treatment in 1990. When it was first administered dosages tended to be much higher then today, typically one 400mg dose every four hours (even at night) and one of AZT's side-effects includes anemia which was a common complaint. Modern treatment regimens typically use lower dosages two to three times a day in order to improve the overall quality of life. AZT is also almost always combined with other drugs in order to prevent in-situ mutation of the HIV into an AZT-resistant form – it's much more difficult to develop two resistances at once.
When used as a preventative treatment, AZT has proven to be particularly effective. If treatment is started before the total amount of virus, known as the viral load, reaches a critical point of 50 million parts per millilitre of blood serum, the chance of AIDS developing is effectively zero. This is widely used with medical practitioners who receive accidental infections.
AZT has been the target of some controversy due to the nature of the patent process. The drug is easy to produce in bulk, costing about $0.63 per daily dose, but due to the patent protection GlaxoSmithKline is able to sell it for about $88 pdd. Normally this would be considered a reasonable price given the high costs of developing a drug, but in this case the drug was fully developed by taxpayers, so long ago that the patent would have already run out if the NIH had applied for one.
In 1991, Public Citizen filed a lawsuit claiming that the AZT/Zidovudine patent was invalid. The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled in 1994 in favour of Glaxo Smith Kline. In 2002, another lawsuit was filed over the patent (which is due to expire in 2005) by the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
AZT is also the source of another controversy; there are some who claim that AZT in fact causes AIDS, not HIV. This sort of claim found itself easy to gain currency in the late 1980s and early 1990s before it became widely known that AIDS was actually considerably more widespread in Africa, where most of its victims have never seen penicillin, let alone AZT.
References
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "AZT."
Synonyms: AZTSynonyms: azidothymidine (n), zidovudine (n). (additional references) |
Crosswords: AZT |
| Non-English Usage: "AZT" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. Hungarian (it, that, there is no royal road to sg, which), Portuguese (azidothymidine). |
| Domain | Title |
Books |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit | Thumbnail | Description & Credit |
 | PET scan on an 11-year-old boy with hemophilia and AIDS. Before treatment subject was confused and somnolent. These symptoms were resolved with AZT therapy. The increase in green and red areas after treatment denotes a rise in glucose metabolism, indicating an improvement in brain function. Credit: Unknown photographer/artist. |  | Shown are polarized crystals photographed through the microscope of the drug 2'3'-dideoxyadenosine, ddA, a drug that is closely related to AZT, azidothymidine. The antiviral effect of ddA against HIV was discovered at the National Cancer Institute, when trying to find a drug to treat patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. Credit: Larry Ostby (photographer). |
 | PET scans at the level of the basal ganglia of a normal control (1) case 1 at the start (2) and after treatment with AZT (3). In (1) there is a homogeneous pattern of glucose metabolism in the frontal, temporal and occipital cortex and in the subcortical grey matter. At the onset of treatment with AZT (2) there is a heterogeneous pattern of glucose metabolism with a relative reduction in the posterior temporal and occipital regions and the thalamus. Thirteen weeks after treatment with AZT, the abnormal pattern has partly resolved (3). All images are scaled from zero to 100% of the maximum activity within the slice (scale shown on right of figure). Credit: Unknown photographer/artist. |  | Photomicrographs of the drug AZT were taken at magnifications of 30x and 50x. Used to illuminate the crystals were polarized and darkfield lighting techniques. AZT is thought to help prevent the replication of HIV, the AIDS virus, also known as HTLV-III. Credit: Larry Ostby (photographer). |
 | AZT in bottles is used intravenously in treating patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, AIDS. Azidothymidine is an antiviral drug which floods the cell with false DNA building blocks so that the virus cannot make copies of itself. When this happens, viral infection and replication is stopped. Credit: Bill Branson (photographer). |  | AZT, in tablet and capsule forms, is used in treating patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, AIDS. Azidothymidine is an antiviral drug which floods the cell with false DNA building blocks so that the virus cannot make copies of itself. When this happens, viral infection and replication is stopped. Credit: Bill Branson (photographer). |
 | Shown is a close-up of scientist's hands holding three test tubes. The one on the left contains normal healthy t-lymphocytes, notice the pellet on the bottom. The middle vial has t-cells that have been infected with the AIDS virus HIV also known as HTLV-III; note the pellet has been destroyed since the cells have died. The test tube on the right contains t-lymphocytes that were exposed to the AIDS virus but since they were protected by AZT, the cells were not destroyed and the pellet stayed intact. Credit: John Crawford (photographer). | ||
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| "AZT" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 66.07% of the time. "AZT" is used about 56 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 66.07% | 37 | 56,631 |
| Noun (common) | 16.07% | 9 | 117,287 |
| Noun (proper) | 12.5% | 7 | 133,076 |
| Lexical Verb (infinitive) | 3.57% | 2 | 245,945 |
| Lexical Verb (base form) | 1.79% | 1 | 339,140 |
| Total | 100.00% | 56 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
azt | 65 |
azt therapy | 8 |
2320 azt | 3 |
3011 azt | 3 |
azt 4029 | 3 |
azt en nation tl | 2 |
3011 azt driver | 2 |
2316 azt | 2 |
azt drug | 2 |
4023 azt | 2 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "AZT"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Danish | AZT-trifosfat (AZT triphosphate). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Dutch | AZT-trifosfaat (AZT triphosphate), AZT-fosforylering (AZT phosphorylation, the enzyme adds phosphate groups to AZT), het enzym voegt fosfaatgroepen toe aan AZT (AZT phosphorylation, the enzyme adds phosphate groups to AZT). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Finnish | AZT-trifosfaatti (AZT triphosphate), azidotymidiinitrifosfaatti (AZT triphosphate), atsidotymidiinitrifosfaatti (AZT triphosphate). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
French | triphosphate d'AZT (AZT triphosphate), l'enzyme phosphoryle l'AZT (AZT phosphorylation, the enzyme adds phosphate groups to AZT). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
German | AZT-Triphosphat (AZT triphosphate), durch Anhängen von Phosphatgruppen enzymatisch ungewandeltes AZT (AZT phosphorylation, the enzyme adds phosphate groups to AZT). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Greek | τριφωσφορική AZT (AZT triphosphate). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Italian | AZT trifosfato (AZT triphosphate), trifosfato d'AZT (AZT triphosphate), l'enzima addiziona gruppi fosfato all'AZT (AZT phosphorylation, the enzyme adds phosphate groups to AZT). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Pig Latin | aztay trifosfato de AZT (AZT triphosphate). (various references) trifosfato de AZT (AZT triphosphate), la enzima agrega grupos fosfato a la AZT (AZT phosphorylation, the enzyme adds phosphate groups to AZT). (various references) trifosfataterat AZT (AZT triphosphate). (various references) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-t-z" | |
-1 letter: at, ta. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-t-z" | |
+1 letter: tzar, zeta. | |
+2 letters: azote, azoth, matza, matzo, tazza, tazze, topaz, tzars, waltz, zetas. | |
+3 letters: azerty, azoted, azotes, azoths, azotic, bezant, byzant, ersatz, halutz, hutzpa, matzah, matzas, matzoh, matzos, matzot, patzer, quartz, stanza, tarzan, tazzas, teazel, teazle, zaftig, zealot, zeatin, zonate. | |
+4 letters: agatize, atomize, azimuth, azotise, azotize, azurite, baptize, bezants, bezzant, britzka, byzants, chalutz, chutzpa, czarist, deutzia, ectozoa, entozoa, epazote, gazette, haziest, hoatzin, hutzpah, hutzpas, lazaret, laziest, matzahs, matzohs, matzoon, matzoth, maziest, mestiza, metazoa, mitzvah, mozetta, ozonate, patzers, quetzal, shiatzu, shmaltz, spatzle, stanzas, tarzans, teazels, teazled, teazles, thiazin, thiazol, topazes, trapeze, triazin, tzaddik, tzardom, tzarina, tzarism, tzarist, tzigane, waltzed, waltzer, waltzes, zacaton, zaniest, zapateo, zaptiah, zaptieh, zealots, zeatins, zemstva, zikurat, zincate, zonated. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Photo Album 6. Usage Frequency 7. Expressions: Internet 8. Translations: Modern | 9. Abbreviations 10. Acronyms 11. Anagrams 12. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
