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.
biopsy – taking a small sample of body tissue for examination and testing in the laboratory.
salvage therapy – a term for the combination therapy used after someone has developed resistance to three or more classes of HIV drugs. Also called ‘third-line’ or ‘rescue therapy’ or ‘treatment of patients with multidrug resistance’.
steatosis – fatty liver. Build up of fat in the liver. Steatosis worsens liver damage and makes hepatitis C harder to treat.