Glossary

SIDA – the abbreviation for AIDS in French, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese.

combination – mixture of drugs to treat HIV.

RNA – an abbreviation for the scientific word for genetic material found in some types of viruses. It is the abbreviation for ribonucleic acid. It is very similar to DNA but is single-strand rather than the double-strand in DNA. See DNA.

anaemia – shortage of oxygen-carrying red blood cells

virion – the name for a virus when it is not inside a cell, for example when new viral material leaves a CD4 cell and is floating in blood or plasma