hepatitis – an infection that causes liver inflammation, usually a virus.
Glossary
Selected words and phrases
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.
oesophagus – part of the gut between the throat and the stomach.
CD4 cells are white blood cells in your immune system. CD4 cells signal to CD8 cells to destroy a virus. CD4 cells are also used by HIV as factories to reproduce in.
seroreversion – the word for when the baby born to an HIV-positive mother, no longer has the mother’s antibodies to HIV.