MULTICENTER EVALUATION OF A FULLY AUTOMATED SCREENING-TEST, VIDAS HIV1-IMMUNODEFICIENCY-VIRUS TYPE-1 AND TYPE-2(2, FOR ANTIBODIES TO HUMAN)

A multicenter study was done to evaluate the sensitivity, specificity, and efficiency of a new screening test for the simultaneous detection of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 and 2 (HIV-1 and HIV 2) antibo dies. The VIDAS HIV 1+2 (bioMerieux, Marcy l'Etoile, France) is a full y automated enzyme-linked fluorescent immunoassay that uses synthetic peptides from immunodominant regions of gp41 of HIV-1 and gp36 of HIV- 2 as antigens. A total of 2,984 samples were evaluated with this syste m in six different laboratories, and the results were compared to thos e obtained with other enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. The VIDAS HI V 1+2 assay showed a very good performance in terms of sensitivity (10 0%) and specificity (99.6%), requiring minimal manipulation and short incubation time (32 min) to give results similar to or better than tho se of the other enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays used for screening.