Didanosine is a medication used to treat HIV and hepatitis B. It comes in tablets, capsules, and syrup forms. The drug slows down the growth of the virus in your body and helps your immune system work better.

The drug is not a cure for HIV infection and must be used with other antiretroviral drugs to keep HIV levels active in the blood. Didanosine is a synthetic purine nucleoside phosphorylated to a monophosphate.

It helps your immune system get stronger. It is a potent inhibitor of HIV-1 replication. It inhibits HIV reverse transcriptase by competing with dATP for incorporation into nascent DNA chains. It acts as a chain terminator. The half-life of didanosine is around 16 hours.

• Didanosine is an antiretroviral nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor (NRTI), which slows the growth of the virus by preventing it from using human DNA as a genetic blueprint for replication.
• The indications for the use of Didanosine include HIV infection: treatment of HIV-1 infection (AIDS) in combination with other antiretroviral agents to reduce the risk of disease progression and death Hepatitis B infection: Treatment of chronic hepatitis B infections in combination with interferon alfa and ribavirin.
• But it should not use it in the treatment of children. It is used to treat HIV infections that have developed resistance to other drugs used to treat the infection. The drug is also used to treat HIV in patients who have failed to respond to other antiretroviral drugs.