HIV Treatment Alerts! - October 2004

Adherence: how well someone takes medication as directed, with respect to number and timing of doses.

Antibodies: types of protein that specifically bind to a cell or virus; usually antibodies are produced by the body’s immune system against viruses or bacteria.

Colonoscopy: a medical examination of the inside of the colon (part of the large intestine) using a lighted scope.

Diabetes: a disorder involving insulin (a substance in the body that helps regulate blood sugar) that results in too much sugar in the blood and urine. Symptoms include hunger, thirst, weight loss, and frequent urination.

Dyslipidemia: abnormal levels of lipid (fat) in the blood.

Epidemiology: the study and statistics of how a disease spreads or is controlled in the population.

Gastrointestinal: referring to the digestive system (stomach, intestines, gut).

Lipoatrophy: a loss of fat, usually in the face, arms, or legs (in HIV+ people).

Lipodystrophy: changes in body fat such as loss of fat in the arms and legs and accumulation of fat in the gut or at the back of the neck.

Metabolism (metabolic): chemical reactions in the body that are part of life; for example, turning food into energy or breathing in oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide.

Mutation: a genetic change, such as when HIV becomes resistant to a medication.

Neuropathy: damage to nerves (usually peripheral nerves, such as those in the arms and legs) resulting in muscle weakness, pain, and numbness.

Opportunistic infection: a disease or infection caused by an organism that is usually harmless, but becomes activated when a person’s immune system is impaired or damaged.

Placebo: sometimes just the act of taking a pill can make someone feel better; so, to watch for this, a placebo (a pill or substance with no effect, such as a sugar pill) is often used to compare with a real medication to see what the medication's true effects might be.

Polymer: a chemical substance or mixture of substances produced from the combining of small molecules, usually then forming repeated molecular units.

Regimen: a combination or schedule of medications.

Resistance (resistant): a genetic change (or mutation, see definition above) that allows HIV to reproduce itself in the presence of an HIV medication.

Virologic failure: the failure of medication to suppress HIV to undetectable levels in the blood, usually caused by the development of viral resistance (see definition above) to those medications.

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Copyright © 2004 - Research Initiative Treatment Action (RITA!). Reproduced with permission. RITA! is published by The Center for AIDS. Contact Thomas Gegeny, MS, ELS, Editor, RITA! for permission to reproduce RITA!. tom@centerforaids.org. http://www.centerforaids.org

AEGiS is made possible through unrestricted grants from Boehringer Ingelheim, Elton John AIDS Foundation, Bridgestone/Firestone Charitable Trust, the National Library of Medicine, and donations from users like you. Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 2005. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

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