Aids Glossary: R-V
Description
This article is from the Health Articles series.
Aids Glossary: R-V
Randomized trial: A study in which participants are randomly assigned to either a treatment or a placebo arm.
Reactogenicity: The capacity to produce adverse reactions.
Reagent: Any chemical used in a chemical reaction or test.
Receptor: A molecule on the surface of a cell that serves as a recognition or binding site for antigens, antibodies or other cellular or immunologic components.
Recombinant: An organism whose genome contains integrated genetic material from a different organism.
Regulatory genes: HIV genes (nef, rev, tat) that regulate viral replication in infected cells.
Regulatory T cells: T cells that direct other immune cells to perform special functions. The chief regulatory cell, the CD4+ T cell or T-helper cell, is HIV's main target.
Retrovirus: HIV and other viruses that carry their genetic material in the form of RNA and have the enzyme reverse transcriptase.
Reverse transcriptase: The enzyme produced by HIV and other retroviruses that allows them to synthesize DNA from their RNA.
Seroconversion: The development of antibodies to a particular antigen. When people develop antibodies to HIV or an experimental HIV vaccine, they "seroconvert" from antibody-negative to antibody-positive.
Serostatus: Results of a test for a specific antibody.
SF-2: An HIV-1 isolate used in vaccine development. SF-2 belongs to clade B, the clade to which most HIV-1 found in North America and Europe belong.
SHIV: Genetically engineered hybrid virus having an HIV envelope and an SIV core.
SIV: Simian immunodeficiency virus. An HIV-like virus that infects and causes an AIDS-like disease in some species of monkeys.
STD: Sexually transmitted disease.
Statistical significance: The probability that an event or difference occurred by chance alone.
Sterilizing immunity: An immune response that completely eliminates an infection.
Stratification: Separation of a sample or population into subgroups, according to some characteristic.
Subtype: Also called a clade.
Subunit HIV vaccine: A genetically engineered vaccine that contains only part of HIV.
Surrogate marker: An indirect measure of disease progression. In HIV disease, the number of CD4+ T cells/mm3 of blood is often used as a surrogate marker.
Syncytia: Giant cells formed by the fusion of an HIV-infected cell with one or more uninfected ones.
T cells: White blood cells (lymphocytes) critical to the immune response. Among these are CD4+ T cells and CD8+ cells.
T lymphocyte proliferation assay: Measures the strength of response of T memory cells to HIV.
Therapeutic HIV vaccine: A vaccine designed to boost the immune response to HIV in a person already infected with the virus.
V3 loop: Section of gp120 on the surface of HIV. Appears to be important in stimulating neutralizing antibodies.
Vaccinia: A cowpox virus, formerly used in human smallpox vaccines. Employed as a vector in HIV vaccine research to transport HIV genes into the body.
Vector: A non-pathogenic bacterium or virus used to transport an antigen into the body to stimulate protective immunity.
Viremia: The presence of virus in the bloodstream.
Virion: A mature virus.
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