On 8/7/01 7:55 PM, "Pat Fallon" <pfallon@bigfoot.com> wrote:
>
> BigBooster wrote:
>
>> How reliable are the "HIV tests?" (I've seen claims that
>> there are more than 60 conditions or diseases that can
>> cause false positives...
>
> ACTORS KNOWN TO CAUSE FALSE POSITIVE HIV ANTIBODY TEST RESULTS
[...snip a very long list...]
The problem is that the tests look for an immune response rather than for
the viruses themselves among other things. This is a general problem for
viral diseases in particular.
This is why Chiron's (CHIR) Nucleic Acid Testing (NAT) technology platform
(Procleix), which is expected to receive FDA approved later this year is a
considered to be a major advancement. Chiron's NAT technology will be the
first general purpose platform that is capable of directly detecting the
presence of viruses in the body. The initial shipping targets will be HIV
and HCV (for testing blood supplies primarily), but could theoretically be
configured to sniff out just about any foreign nucleic acid signature in the
body as I understand it.
The primary benefit of this technology is that it is extremely sensitive and
that you can detect a viral infection much earlier than previously possible.
Note that the NAT platform is already in use in the U.S. and elsewhere for
blood diagnostics as it is considered an extraordinarily important
capability, it just isn't FDA approved, so Chiron isn't allowed to make any
money yet. Final approval is expected in September or October of this year.
So that sort of answers your question. NAT should effectively eliminate
false positives AND false negatives for HIV (and other viruses) in the body.
-James Rogers
jamesr@best.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Oct 12 2001 - 14:40:04 MDT