Glossary

Selected words and phrases

hepatitis – an infection that causes liver inflammation, usually a virus.

phenotype test – a type of drug resistance that tests whether a drug is sensitive or resistance to a sample of HIV.

treat as non-pregnant adult – Treat as non-pregnant adult is a very common phrase in HIV and pregnancy. This means that generally your HIV is treated as if you were not pregnant. There are some exceptions, particularly when you do not need treatment for your own HIV and concerning some of the commonly used HIV drugs.

genotype (or genotypic) – This term has several common uses:

1. a general term for the molecular structure of a living organism or virus.

2. a test that looks at the structure of an organism of virus (ie genotype resistance test looks for changes in the virus structure – called mutations).

3. a category for different types of similar viruses – ie hepatitis C has many subtypes, referred to as genotype-1, genotype-2 etc. HCV genotype is the strongest predictor of response to hepatitis C treatment.