---

Background: HIV-1 and HCV are two of the most important blood-borne infectious agents. Hence, reliable, precise, and sensitive detection of these viruses in infected patients and donated blood units is highly important. Noticing the limitations of serological assays in detection of these infectious agents, this study was to use fast and sensitive molecular assays like real-time PCR. Materials and Methods: In this trial, a home-brewed SYBR green-based multiplex real time PCR, on the basis of melting curve analysis, was developed for the single or simultaneous detection of HCV and HIV-1 infections in plasma samples. Data were analyzed using SPSS software version 16. Results: The results obtained from different reactions on several clinical samples showed that the analytical sensitivities of the developed assay for HIV-1 and HCV were 200 and 100 copies/ml, respectively. It was also shown that the primers designed for each virus had no interaction with each other and other interfering agents. Conclusion: Noticing the good level of sensitivity and specificity, easy handling, relatively low cost, and rapid analysis of samples, this method can be a useful and rapid approach for simple and effective detection of HCV and HIV-1 in plasma samples.

---

Background: Because of the reported high ability of virulence and medicinal resistance of HIV-1 virus during the last decades, many investigations have been performed concerning discovery and the introduction of anti-HIV-1 drugs. The results of numerous researches have shown that drugs and protease inhibitory compounds mainly containing plant derivatives specially terpenoids may control HIV-1 infection very effectively. The aim of this research is the bioinformatical study of HIV-1 protease inhibition by standard drugs and triterpenoides from plant and mushroom.

Materials and Methods: This is a descriptive-analytic study. In the present study , the structure of drugs, triterpene comounds, and HIV-1 protease enzyme was received from the databases such as Chem Spider, PubChem, Human Metabolome Database (HMDB), and Protein Data Bank (PDB). After that, molecular docking was performed by iGRMDOCK 2.1 software

Results: The results confirmed that the interactions of the triterpene compounds like the standard drugs were in three safeguarded and catalytic areas including central domain, flap and carboxylic terminal domain specially amino acids Asp25, Asp27, Ala28, Asp29 and Asp30 in active sites of HIV-1 protease. Also, The study of the interactions of these areas showed that there is a direct correlation between the strength of the interactions and IC50 values of these compounds.

Conclusion: Finally, with due attention to the high effectiveness and the proprietary function of triterpenoids, we can conclude that these compounds may be considered as effectire HIV-1 antiprotease drugs.