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Glossary

Selected words and phrases

antepartum refers to the time during pregnancy before a baby is born. Antepartum refers to the mother.

See: intrapartum and postpartum.

CART – combination anti-retroviral therapy.

base – (also called nucleotide) – the building blocks in DNA that form amino acids. There are four bases represented by the letters A (adenine), T (thymine), C (cytosine) and G (guanine). In RNA the T is replaced by U (uricil).

Genetics, HIV structure and life cycle

carcinoma – cancer in tissues covering or lining organs of the body, such as the skin, the uterus, the lung, or the breast.

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.