Glossary

pulmonary – relating to the lungs.

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.

SC (sub-cutaneous) – under the skin. See IV (intravenous) and IM (intra-muscular).

toxoplasmosis (toxo) – an opportunistic infection caused by a protozoa. The risk to develop toxo increases after CD4 counts fall below 100 cells/mm3.

Toxo section of the training manual.

late breaker – in research, this is a study presented at a medical meeting that was submitted to the conference organisers after the main programme had been decided. There are usually only a few dozen late-breakers, where the last minute results are thought important enough to include – like ‘late-breaking news’. Although this studies often contain the most exciting news, they are given much less time to present their results – maybe less than 10 minutes compared to a normal 15 or 20 minute session. These summary results are also difficult to verify because they include fewer slides and fewer details.