One of the key issues to achieve this goal is to shorten the so-called “diagnostic window period” when the humoral immune response toward the virus is not fully developed during the acute phase of HIV-1 infection. Early diagnosis of this infection is critical in providing effective antiviral treatment and to prevent transmission. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection remains an important public health concern in most of the developing countries including Tanzania. Keywords: HIV antigen/antibody combination ELISA′s, HIV infection, diagnosis Introduction Combination of two HIV antigen/antibody combination ELISAs can be used as an alternative confirmatory testing strategy for screening of donated blood at the National and Zonal blood transfusion centres and in lab diagnosis of HIV infection. Initial testing using either Vironostika or Murex HIV antigen/antibody combination ELISA followed by testing of reactive samples on the Enzygnost HIV Integral II gave a sensitivity and specificity of 100% with reduced window period. Enzygnost HIV Integral II detected HIV infection seven days since first bleed. The final specificity at repeat testing was 99.5% (95% CI 98.2-99.9%) for Vironostika. The specificity for the Enzygnost HIV Integral II and Murex was 100% (95% CI 99.1-100%). Sensitivity was 100% (95% CI 98.3-100%) for all the three HIV ELISAs. Three hundred and eighty seven (64.9%) were HIV negative samples.
Of these, the prevalence of HIV infection was 2.3% (3/130), 2.3% (3/127), 2.2% (3/139) and 100% (200/200) for VCT clients, ANC attendees, blood donors and CTC patients, respectively. A total of 209/596 (35.1%) serum samples were confirmed HIV positive.
ResultsĪ total of 600 blood samples were included in the evaluation. This was a laboratory-based evaluation of Enzygnost HIV Integral II Antibody/ Antigen, Murex HIV antigen/antibody and Vironostika HIV Uniform II antigen/antibody conducted between October 2011 and May 2012. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of Enzygnost HIV Integral II antigen/antibody combination ELISAs in order to formulate HIV ELISA testing algorithms for the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare, Tanzania.
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