NRTI – Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor, a type of HIV drug – also called ‘nuke’ or ‘nucleoside analogue’.
3TC (lamivudine). abacavir, AZT, FTC (emtricitabine), d4T (stavudine), ddI (didanosine) all belong to this class.
Tenofovir DF and tenofovir alafenamide (TAF) are a nucleotide analogues which is similar enough to be counted as part of this class.
Drug targets in the virus life cycle.
AIDS – acquired immune deficiency syndrome.
uneven distribution – a term in statistics where most results fall to the left (positive skewness) or right (negative skewness) of the middle of the range.
mortality – medical word for death or dying.
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).