Cheaper Group Tests Flag Infectious HIV Carriers

Cheaper Group Tests Flag Infectious HIV Carriers

Reuters Health

Friday, May 6, 2005

Last Updated: 2005-05-06 9:07:36 -0400 (Reuters Health) By Gene Emery

BOSTON (Reuters) - Health officials in North Carolina have found a cost-effective way to identify people whose infection with the AIDS virus is so recent that the standard screening test would not normally work.

A new system pinpoints carriers earlier in the course of the disease, when they are at least 10 times more infectious than those detected by the standard test, researchers said in a study to be published on Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

"This form of testing should be a standard tool for the prevention and surveillance of HIV infection and for the care of infected persons," the researchers reported.

The system involves combining blood samples from 90 patients so that a highly sensitive - but expensive - test known as nucleic acid amplification can look for traces of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_24500.html