Glossary

candida – fungus (yeast) infection that affects the mouth and throat, gullet, sinuses, genital organs and – rarely – the brain. Also called ‘thrush’.

tropism – the type of coreceptor used by HIV in order to attach to and then infect a cell. If HIV uses the CCR5 coreceptor on the surface of the a CD4 cell it is called R5-tropic. If it uses the CXCR4 co receptor it is called R4-tropic). Early HIV infection is usually R5-tropic but over time, especially in late disease (if CD4 counts drop to less than 50 cells/mm3) the virus shifts to being X4-tropic.  Mixed tropic refers to a having some viruses that use R5 and some that use X4.

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.

Immune reconstitution inflammatory syndrome – see: IRIS

viral load – the amount of virus in a sample of blood or other fluid. With HIV this is commonly the amount of HIV in a millilitre (mL) of blood. See viral load test.