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Glossary

Selected words and phrases

dyspnoea – medical term for symptoms related to difficulty breathing, shortness or breath.

DNA – an abbreviation for the scientific word for genes and genetic material. It is the abbreviation for deoxyribonucleic acid. See RNA.

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.

Online calculator.

See sensitivity.

undetectable – an amount smaller than a test can measure. For viral load tests, this means below 400 or, more commonly, below 50 copies/mL, depending on the make of test. In research laboratories, some very sensitive tests can measure down to 1 copy/mL.

adverse event – an unexpected or unwanted effect during a research study. Sometimes this used to describe a side effect from a drug.

Although all side effects are adverse events, not all adverse events are side effects.