cross-resistance – when resistance to one drug causes resistance to other similar drugs.
This commonly happens for every class or family of HIV drugs: nukes, NNRTIs, PIs, integrase inhibitors and entry inhibitors.
Glossary
Selected words and phrases
HAV – hepatitis A, a virus that causes liver disease.
brand name drug – drug supplied under a marketing name. Brand name drugs are usually protected by patents, but some generic drugs also have brand names
AST (aspartate aminotransferase; also called serum glutamicoxaloacetic transaminase; SGOT) – an enzyme that is made in many places throughout the body (heart, intestines, muscle) , which is monitored (as with ALT) routinely in HIV-positive people on ARVs to detect liver toxicity from HIV drugs (or other medications). Elevated AST that is specifically made in the liver signals liver injury, but does not indicate how serious liver damage is.
codon – the word for the junction on genetic material (DNA or RNA) occupied by three nucleotides (or bases) to form an amino acid. In HIV it is most used when refering to drug resistance. There is an amino acid at each codon and the codons are numbered (starting from 1) for each section of the HIV gene. For example the mutation M184V in RT refers to a mutation change at codon 184 in the reverse transcriptase gene.