Glossary

cryoglobulinemia – increased blood levels of abnormal proteins called cryoglobulins that can inflame blood vessels and thicken blood.

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.

steatosis – fatty liver. Build up of fat in the liver. Steatosis worsens liver damage and makes hepatitis C harder to treat.

maternal-foetal microtransfusions are when small amounts of infected blood from the mother leak from the placenta to the baby during labour (or other disruption of the placenta).

median (average) – where the results are all arranged in numerical order and the middle of the range is taken as the (median) average. See mean.

What is an average.