icterus – medical term for jaundice (yellowing skin)
Glossary
Selected words and phrases
gastrointestinal tract (or GI tract) is where we digest our food. It is a long tube that runs from the mouth to the anus. The gastrointestinal tract begins with the mouth and then becomes the oesophagus (food pipe), stomach, duodenum, small intestine, large intestine (colon), rectum and, finally, the anus. It is also called the GI tract.
Atherosclerosis refers to a narrowing or hardening of large and medium sized arteries.
The narrowing is caused by a build-up of plaque, and usually takes many years.
As the walls of the artery thicken, the heart has to work harder to pump the same amount of blood through a narrower gap.
T1/2 (half-life) – the time taken a drug to clear from the highest concentration to half this level. Drugs have different half-lives in different compartments (ie half-life in blood can be different from the half-life inside a cell). It take 5 x the half-live for a drug to be considered cleared.
side effect – an unwanted effect from taking a medicine. Sometimes called an adverse event or drug toxicity.