Published In

BMC Research Notes

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2012

Subjects

HIV infections -- Diagnosis --Analysis, HIV (Viruses) -- Analysis -- Quality control, HIV infections -- Uganda, Polymerase chain reaction -- Diagnostic use

Physical Description

4 pages

Abstract

Background: Rapid HIV tests provide same-day results and are widely used in HIV testing programs in areas with limited personnel and laboratory infrastructure. The Uganda Ministry of Health currently recommends the serial rapid testing algorithm with Determine, STAT-PAK, and Uni-Gold for diagnosis of HIV infection. Using this algorithm, individuals who test positive on Determine, negative to STAT-PAK and positive to Uni-Gold are reported as HIV positive. We conducted further testing on this subgroup of samples using qualitative DNA PCR to assess the potential for false positive tests in this situation.

Results: Of the 3388 individuals who were tested, 984 were HIV positive on two consecutive tests, and 29 were considered positive by a tiebreaker (positive on Determine, negative on STAT-PAK, and positive on Uni-Gold). However, when the 29 samples were further tested using qualitative DNA PCR, 14 (48.2%) were HIV negative.

Conclusion: Although this study was not primarily designed to assess the validity of rapid HIV tests and thus only a subset of the samples were retested, the findings show a potential for false positive HIV results in the subset of individuals who test positive when a tiebreaker test is used in serial testing. These findings highlight a need for confirmatory testing for this category of individuals.

Note: At the time of writing, David Bangsberg was affiliated with Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Global Health and Harvard Medical School.

Description

©2012 Baveewo et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

DOI

10.1186/1756-0500-5-154

Persistent Identifier

http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/19062

Publisher

BioMed Central

Download

Share

COinS