meningitis – inflammation (-itis) of the meninges (part of fluid that surrounds the brain). Meningitis can be caused by different infections – ie bacterial meningitis (from bacterial infection), viral meningitis (form a virus) etc.
Glossary
Selected words and phrases
Hypertension is the medical name for high blood pressure (BP). Blood pressure is measured as two numbers ie 120/80. The first number is systolic BP – the pressure when your heart beats. The second number is diastolic BP, which is the pressure when you heart rests between beats.
Target range for BP is usually 120/80. Drugs to reduce BP are sometimes recommended if this is above 130/85 or 140/90. This also depends on other risk factors for heart disease, including age, sex, ethnicity ajd other health factors.
Hypertension increases the risk of a heart attack or stroke, particularly when diastolic BP is high.
See: Hypotension (low blood pressure).
specificity – when referring to the accuracy of a test result, specificity refers to the proportion of people who do not have an illness or disease who have a negative test result.
If a test has low specificity, the concern is over false-positive results – where people who to not have a condition are wrongly diagnosed as having it.
If a test has high specificity, then people who to not have a condition are correctly ruled out from the condition.
For a serious condition, high specificity is essential to prevent people being unnecessarily treated.
See sensitivity.
half-life (T1/2) the time taken a drug to clear from the highest concentration to half this level. Drugs have different half-lives in different compartments (ie half-life in blood can be different from the half-life inside a cell). It take 5 x the half-live for a drug to be considered cleared.
antibody – a protein that is part of your immune system that is produced to fight an infection. Each antibody recognises a specific antigen.