title: Evaluation of an agglutination HIV-1 + 2 antibody assay.
abstract: Studies have shown that an HIV (HIV-PA) agglutination assay (Serodia) for the detection of antibody to human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) can be as sensitive and as specific as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). However, since this HIV assay was designed to detect antibody to the HIV-1 virus, a substantial number of HIV-2 positive sera are missed by this assay. Since the HIV-2 has now been found throughout the world this test is becoming less suitable. The new HIV-1 + 2 assay version (HIV-1 + 2 PA) was evaluated in 300 sera, which contained 50 HIV-1, 40 HIV-2 and 10 HIV-1/HIV-2 antibody positive samples, and a sensitivity and specificity of 100% and 99%, respectively, was obtained. Whereas all HIV-2 positive sera were detected by the new HIV-1 + 2 version, 26% (13/50) were missed by the old version of the agglutination test. It is concluded that the HIV-1 + 2 PA assay is a promising instrument free assay which can be used for screening purposes in areas where both HIV-1 and HIV-2 are present.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Tropical Medicine, Department of Microbiology, Antwerp, Belgium.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Vercauteren
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Beelaert
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: van der Groen
mesh_terms: D015492:AIDS Serodiagnosis / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D000372:Agglutination Tests / Q000379:methods* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D004797:Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D015483:HIV Antibodies / Q000097:blood*; D006679:HIV Seropositivity / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000276:immunology; D015497:HIV-1 / Q000276:immunology*; D015498:HIV-2 / Q000276:immunology*; D006801:Humans; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014773:Virology / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data
chemical_list: D015483:HIV Antibodies