RESEARCH ARTICLE
Detection of Early Sero-Conversion HIV Infection Using the INSTITM HIV-1 Antibody Point-of-Care Test
Darrel Cook 1, Mark Gilbert 1, 2, Lillo DiFrancesco1, Mel Krajden*, 1, 2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2010Volume: 4
First Page: 176
Last Page: 179
Publisher ID: TOAIDJ-4-176
DOI: 10.2174/1874613601004010176
Article History:
Received Date: 21/4/2010Revision Received Date: 4/10/2010
Acceptance Date: 4/11/2010
Electronic publication date: 30/12/2010
Collection year: 2010
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
We compared the INSTITM HIV-1 Antibody Point-of-Care (POC) Test to laboratory-based tests for detection of early sero-conversion (i.e. acute) HIV infections. Fifty-three (53) individuals with early HIV infection, (i.e. 3rd generation anti-HIV EIA non-reactive or reactive, HIV-1 Western Blot non-reactive or indeterminate and HIV-1 p24 antigen reactive) were tested by INSTITM. The INSTITM test was reactive for 34/49 (sensitivity 69.4%; 95% confidence interval 54.6-81.8%) early-infected individuals whose laboratory-based 3rd generation HIV EIA test was reactive. Four (4) were non-reactive by both the laboratory-based EIA and INSTITM tests, but were p24 antigen reactive. The INSTITM POC test performs well compared with other POC tests for the detection of early sero-conversion HIV infection, but it may miss 20% to 30% of those detected by laboratory-based 3rd generation anti-HIV tests. Both POC and laboratory-based anti-HIV tests will fail to detect a proportion of infected individuals in the first weeks after infection.
