lipodystrophy – body fat changes, including fat loss (from arms, legs, buttocks and face) and/or fat gain (in abdomen, breasts and shoulders). The lipodystrophy syndrome also includes metabolic changes in lipid and glucose metabolism.
Glossary
Selected words and phrases
TD (or tid) – a short hand term for medication dosing that means ‘take three times a day’.
ARV – a drug that works against a retrovirus, eg treatment for HIV. See: antiretroviral.
platelet – a blood cell that helps with blood clotting.
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.