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Glossary

Selected words and phrases

peer support – support provided by people who share the same experience or problem. HIV peer support is provided by other HIV-positive people.

active – an active drug is a drug that still works to reduce viral load. The virus is still sensitive to that drug.

fold-change – a term relating to drug resistance after a phenotype resistance test.

4-fold resistance (also called a 4-fold loss in sensitivity) means you need to use four times the dose to get the same reduction in viral load.

Stevens-Johnson Syndrome – a type of severe rash that is luckily rare. This rash has been reported in 0.1–0.3% of people using NNRTIs. It can also occur with other drugs including antibiotics (including cotrimoxazole/Septrin). Any rash on an NNRTI should be shown to your doctor to decide whether treatment needs to be switched or can continue.

mean (average) – where all the results are added together, and then divided by the number of results to find the (mean) average. See median.

What is an average.