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Glossary of HIV/AIDS Terms

This glossary contains 1,600 terms and is maintained by the editors of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation's Bulletin of Experimental Treatments for AIDS.

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q: medical abbreviation for every, often used to specify drug dosing schedules (e.g., q6h indicates every six hours; q4w indicates four times per week).

qd: once daily.

qi (aka chi): the vital energy believed to be responsible for health and disease in traditional Chinese medicine.

qid: four times a day.

qualitative: relating to, or expressed in terms of, quality; qualitative research is based on individual, often subjective, analysis.

quality-adjusted life year (acronym QALY, acronym QALY): a year of life measured according to its value or quality. 1.0 QALY is equal to one year spent in perfect health; a value of less that 1.0 indicates illness or other debilitation during the year.

quantitative: relating to, or expressed in terms of, quantity; quantitative research is based on numerical data.

quasispecies: a substrain of an organism that develops within an individual by the process of evolutionary selection.

quiescent: refers to a state of resting, inactivity, or latency.

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