Glossary

duration of ruptured membranes – time between when the mother’s waters break and the actual delivery.

lipodystrophy – body fat changes, including fat loss (from arms, legs, buttocks and face) and/or fat gain (in abdomen, breasts and shoulders). The lipodystrophy syndrome also includes metabolic changes in lipid and glucose metabolism.

anaemia – shortage of oxygen-carrying red blood cells

nanotechnology – science working with tiny particles at the level of manipulating individual molecules. This is an exciting field of medicine. Drugs developed with nanotechnology would need much lower drug doses (hopefully cheaper and having fewer side effects) and would be longer lasting (perhaps being taken every2–4 weeks).

TasP (Treatment as Prevention) – a term to emphasise the impact that HIV drugs (ART) has on dramatically reducing the chance of HIV transmission.

ART is firstly for the health of the HIV positive person. But having an undetectable viral load on ART makes it so difficult to transmit HIV that the risk gets so close to zero that it is effectively zero.

For example, in the PARTNER study, nearly 900 couples had sex more than 58,000 times without condoms, without any transmissions. Each couple included one person who was HIV positive with an undetectable viral load on ART and one person who was HIV negative. ZERO transmissions.