HIV AIDS laboratory findings

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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1] Associate Editors-in-Chief: Ujjwal Rastogi, MBBS [2]

Overview

Laboratory tests for detecting HIV infection are of three types:

1. Screening tests
2. Supplemental tests
3. Confirmatory tests

After confirmation of the diagnosis, severity of disease and rate of progression are estimated by measurement of:

1. CD4 count.
2. HIV viral load.

AIDS screening tests

These are designed to detect Antibodies against HIV and are of three types.

1. ELISA test (based on antigen-antibody and enzyme substrate reactions).
2. Rapid Tests (Dot blot and Latex Agglutination Tests).
3. Simple Tests (Particle agglutination tests).

Both Simple and Rapid Tests are ready available and cheaper as compared to ELISA.

AIDS supplemental tests

These are used to validate results obtained by the screening tests and are of two type:

1. Western blot test
2. Immunofluorescent tests.

AIDS confirmatory tests

These test aim at the following:

1. Demonstration of Viral Antigen(P24).
2. Isolation of HIV.
3. Detection of viral nucleic acid.

The confirmatory tests can diagnose HIV infection even during the window period (initial two to three weeks of infection), in which both the screening and the supplemental tests fail to diagnose the infection. However these are done in the reference centers thus time consuming and costly.