Naked Science Forum

Life Sciences => Cells, Microbes & Viruses => Topic started by: jaziah jeffries on 30/09/2011 14:30:06

Title: How is HIV diagnosed?
Post by: jaziah jeffries on 30/09/2011 14:30:06

jaziah jeffries asked the Naked Scientists:
   
WHAT ARE THE STEPS OF INVESTIGATING HIV [infection]?

What do you think?

Title: How is HIV diagnosed?
Post by: The science enthusiast on 05/10/2011 20:08:33

The test that is available is an antibody test. The test finds the specific HIV antibody made by the white blood cells to combat HIV. In a normal healthy human HIV antibodies would not be present because the body does not need to fight the disease, however because the body can take up to 6 months to discover the HIV virus then this test could give a false negative(even though you have the virus the body has not released the antibodies therefore giving a negative on the test).     

Title: How is HIV diagnosed?
Post by: CliffordK on 05/10/2011 23:08:24

Wikipedia has a good summary of different HIV tests.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_test

There are a number of Nucleic Acid tests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV_test#Nucleic_acid-based_tests_.28NAT.29) that are sensitive down to as little as 12 days after infection.

The pooling of samples for screening sounds like a good idea, and could potentially save a lot of money from doing individual tests.

Title: How is HIV diagnosed?
Post by: CliffordK on 05/10/2011 23:16:20

One other thing.  HIV infections are a very sensitive matter, both of individual stigma, and social stigma.

So a positive result on an HIV test would necessarily require specific counseling. 

Also, since an HIV infection generally requires intimate contact, or shared injections, the CDC should follow up with tracing an individual's contacts, hopefully to find the source of the infection, or others that were potentially exposed.

Title: How is HIV diagnosed?
Post by: eromlee on 11/10/2011 04:27:14

Some test are required blood sample but now it can only be done trough swabbing from the mouth and you can now see your result in almost an hour.

http://std.about.com/od/gettingtested/a/hivtesthub.htm