SCREENING FOR ANTI-HIV AND HBSAG IN POOLED SERA FROM A CLINICAL-CHEMISTRY SECTION AS A TOOL FOR EPIDEMIOLOGIC SURVEY

With the aim of estimating the unknown spread of HIV into the general society, a program for testing pooled routine sera from a clinical che mistry laboratory has been tried. Serum samples obtained from the dail y inflow of blood tubes at the Clinical Chemistry Laboratory, Malmo Ge neral Hospital, and not labelled as risk samples for blood-borne infec tion(s), were collected and pools of up to ten sera each were construc ted according to a special protocol. All serum pools were screened for anti-HIV and HBsAg. During the 32-months period of the study 3,016 se rum pools from men and the same number from women were collected and a nalysed. These pools together contained sera from 26,468 male and 26,8 91 female patients, respectively. Altogether 33 male and 2 female pool s were found anti-HIV positive. Anti-HIV-positive males appeared in al l age groups, without significant difference between the groups. Two f emale pools from the age group 15 to 24 years were anti-HIV positive; these samples were drawn during the last year of testing. HBsAg was de tected in 189 male and 129 female pools. From 1089 to the first half o f 1991 the mean anti-HIV prevalence among the male samples investigate d was 0. 10%, with 95% confidence limits from 0 to 0.25%. If the upper confidence limit is exceeded in the future, this could be a warning o f increased spread of HIV of in society.