Td. Ly et al., Early detection of human immunodeficiency virus infection using third- andfourth-generation screening assays, EUR J CL M, 20(2), 2001, pp. 104-110
Citations number
11
Categorie Soggetti
Microbiology
Journal title
EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF CLINICAL MICROBIOLOGY & INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Early detection of infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is cri
tical for clinical diagnosis and treatment of patients, as well as for ensu
ring the safety of blood transfusion products. Recently, a number of fourth
-generation HIV screening assays have been developed that offer increased s
ensitivity over earlier tests by combining detection of anti-HIV antibodies
with detection of the p24 viral antigen. Previously, six different HIV ass
ays were compared against a broad range of 30 seroconversion panels. In the
present study, three of the newer fourth-generation assays were tested tog
ether with three of the third-generation HIV antibody-only assays. This ext
ensive analysis highlights (i) the importance of p24 antigen detection for
early diagnosis, (ii) the improved sensitivity of fourth-generation assays
over antibody-only tests, and (iii) the superior performance of the Vidas D
uo assay, which allows reduction of the diagnostic window by up to 2 weeks.
Finally, the results emphasize the detection limitations of the different
assays and suggest improvements for future HIV screening assays.