Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1990. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
San Francisco Chronicle (SF) - The Voice of the West, 901 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94119; - WEDNESDAY January 18, 1990 Edition: FINAL Section: NEWS Page: A20 Word Count: 342
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Writer
The new rule also requires laboratories to confirm every preliminary positive result by using either of two even more stringent methods before reporting the results to patients or their physicians.
A recent survey of the state's licensed laboratories showed that some of them have used other test systems which have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration but are less accurate than the 5-year-old ELISA method, Kizer noted. That survey was reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association last month, and some laboratories also indicated they did not check possibly positive results by subjecting the blood samples to a second confirming test.
Improper interpretation of the test results, said the specialists conducting the survey, meant that physicians and their patients have encountered confusing and often traumatic reports:
Some patients, the survey showed, were given "false positive" reports that indicated they were infected by HIV, the AIDS virus, when in fact they were not; others were told they were free of infection, even though later tests showed their blood did contain antibodies to the human immunodeficiency virus, indicating they were in fact infected.
"The ELISA screening test is currently the most accurate test for detecting antibodies to HIV at this time," Kizer said.
The test's name stands for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, and while it does not detect the AIDS virus itself, when properly performed and interpreted it does detect antibodies that the body mobilizes in response to infection by the virus.
The two tests used to confirm the positive results indicated by the ELISA system are termed the Western Blot method and the immunofluorescence assay, or IFA procedure. Under the new regulation, if a test used to confirm a positive ELISA result gives an ambiguous reading, blood samples must be sent to a public health laboratory for final testing and interpretation.
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