Testing and health monitoring

Testing and health monitoring features

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  Testing…testing…one, two, three

  When you visit your HIV clinic, they will be measuring a lot more than just your CD4 count and viral load. What else are they checking and...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  Happy families

  Sally Farthing is an HIV specialist midwife at West Middlesex Hospital in Isleworth, west London. She praises the measures – and the mothers – who together have sent...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  Don’t live in ignorance: how do we expand HIV testing?

  Should everyone take an HIV test? Gus Cairns investigates. ...

  From:HIV treatment update

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  Scaling up HIV testing and counselling towards universal access: what works in resource-limited settings?

  This issue looks at the diverse possibilities and challenges for expanding HIV testing and counselling as well as policy and practice in resource-poor settings. ...

  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Clinical monitoring as effective as CD4 count and viral load for deciding when to switch to second-line ART in poor countries

  This issue reviews monitoring options for switching to second-line in resource-poor settings. ...

  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Main article: Making the world safe for more routine HIV testing

  Review of issues surrounding recommednations for more routine HIV antibody testing in resource-limited settings, including human rights arguments and proposals for mandatory testing, as well...

  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Cheap viral load test is urgently needed for resource-poor settings, say treatment advocates

  Review of evidence on the need for viral load testing to guide antiretroviral treatment switching in resource-limited settings....

  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Routine or opt-out counselling and testing: findings from the 2006 PEPFAR meeting

  Review of the issues involved in expanding HIV counselling and testing in resource-limited settings....

  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Monitoring antiretroviral treatment with limited laboratory services

  How can HIV treatment be monitored in settings with limited laboratory capacity, and how can treatment failure be identified without viral load testing?...

  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

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  Symptoms versus laboratory monitoring as criteria for starting treatment

  In the absence of laboratory monitoring of CD4 counts, how can symptoms be used to determine when to start antiretroviral therapy?...

  From:HIV & AIDS treatment in practice

Testing and health monitoring in your own words

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  Seroconversion

  I was given my diagnosis over the telephone after spending four days in hospital with meningitis. I now realise it wasn’t meningitis, it was an...

  From:In your own words

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  The bus of doom

  I've recently read the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman (which, if you haven't already read, I highly recommend). In this theological novel disguised...

  From:In your own words

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  Finding out

  The day was 9th of November, 2009; I was having my college lesson on the concepts of computer script languages – what a day it...

  From:In your own words

Testing and health monitoring news from aidsmap

• Rapid HIV test performance poorer with oral fluid than blood, especially when prevalence is low

  The performance of OraQuick, a widely used rapid point-of-care test for HIV diagnosis, is slightly poorer when testing oral fluid samples than when testing blood samples, according to a meta-analysis published in the online edition of Lancet Infectious Diseases this ...

  25 January 2012 | Roger Pebody

• Is a viral load just below 50 copies/ml low enough to ensure the long-term success of HIV therapy?

  Suppressing viral load to below 50 copies/ml may not be enough to ensure the long-term success of antiretroviral therapy, according to a UK study published in the March edition of Clinical Infectious Diseases. Using ultra-sensitive viral load assays, ...

  16 January 2012 | Michael Carter

• Home-based counselling and testing identifies people in need of treatment earlier

  Home-based HIV counselling and testing (HBCT) was shown to be the most effective gateway for getting those who tested HIV-positive into care at an early stage of HIV disease, before they became ill, compared to voluntary counselling and testing (VCT), ...

  10 January 2012 | Carole Leach-Lemens

• Rapid ‘combination’ test fails to detect many cases of acute HIV infection

  A rapid, point-of-care test, which aims to reduce the ‘window period’ through the detection of both antibodies and p24 antigen has poor performance in a clinical setting, researchers report in an article published online ahead of print by the ...

  06 January 2012 | Roger Pebody

• Virulence of HIV has increased since first reports of AIDS

  HIV may have evolved to become more virulent over the course of the epidemic, according to the results of a meta-analysis published in the online edition of AIDS.The study estimates that six months after infection, the CD4 cell ...

  22 November 2011 | Michael Carter

• Low HIV viral load doesn't cause inflammation or increase the risk of death

  Low level viral load does not increase inflammation or the risk of death, US investigators report in the online journal PloS One. The investigators had hypothesised that a low viral load would be linked with important markers of inflammation ...

  08 November 2011 | Michael Carter

• Swiss show that concerns about potency of HIV therapy in context of non-subtype B infections are unfounded

  Patients infected with non-B HIV subtypes have virological outcomes which are at least as good – if not better – than those seen in patients with subtype B infection, Swiss investigators report in the online edition of Clinical Infectious ...

  25 October 2011 | Michael Carter

• 'High viral load' should mean over half a million copies, not over 100,000, Rome study suggests

  A study by the University of Rome has found that a substantial proportion of patients with HIV are being diagnosed with viral loads of over half a million copies/ml, and it is these patients who are at raised risk ...

  24 October 2011 | Gus Cairns

• Missed appointments in early years of HIV care associated with longer time to HIV suppression and higher cumulative viral load

  Patients who miss clinic appointments in the two years after they enter HIV care take longer to suppress their viral load to undetectable levels and also have a higher cumulative viral load than patients with high levels of appointment ...

  28 September 2011 | Michael Carter

• Cumulative viral load: an important measure of risk of death in patients with HIV

  Cumulative viral load - the total amount of viral replication measured over a long period - is associated with the risk of death for patients with HIV, US research published in the online edition of Clinical Infectious ...

  12 September 2011 | Michael Carter

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Testing and health monitoring news selected from other sources

• HIV+? Don't worry, some UAE clinics will not tell the authorities

  Many clinics suspected of not informing health authority about positive cases.

  06 February 2012 | Emirates 24/7

• Chembio, OraSure vie over Over The Counter HIV tests

  Even as a Pennsylvania-based company made news last month by advancing toward approval for an over-the-counter HIV test, a Long Island company is making strides with its own version of the test.

  03 February 2012 | Long Island Business News

• Rapid HIV Test Results Better With Blood

  A rapid HIV test gives slightly less exact results when used with oral samples than with blood samples, researchers reported.

  25 January 2012 | MedPage Today HIV/AIDS

• Testing for HIV together, hearing results together

  Newly dating and slightly anxious, two men bared their arms for blood tests and pondered the possibility that one of them, or both, could be infected with HIV. An innovative program — called Testing Together — would allow them to hear their test results minutes later, while sitting side by side.

  18 January 2012 | SFGate

• Jamaica - More Jamaicans getting tested for HIV, STIs

  THE Ministry of Health's National HIV/STI programme has seen a marked increase in the number of persons getting tested for HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) -- which causes the AIDS -- and other sexually transmitted infections.

  14 January 2012 | Jamaica Observer

• False positive HIV tests: the problem no one wants to talk about (and how to solve it)

  I first came across this unpleasant reality in Bukavu, DRC while working as a medical coordinator for MSF in 2005. We came to realize that some people in our program did not have HIV, so we re-tested a number of them—and identified almost 50 who were suspect for false positive HIV diagnosis. This news was devastating, considering the consequences a false diagnosis can have on people’s lives.

  03 January 2012 | PLoS Blogs

• OraSure Makes Final FDA Submission For Approval Of OTC Rapid HIV Test

  OraSure Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq:OSUR), a market leader in rapid point-of-care infectious disease diagnostics and biological sample collection, stabilization and preparation products, announced today that it has submitted the final of three modules in its application to the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the approval of the Company's OraQuick(R) Rapid HIV-1/2 test for sale in the U.S. consumer or over-the-counter (OTC) market.

  03 January 2012 | OraSure press release

• Tanzania: De-listed HIV test kits still in use

  While the World Health Organisation (WHO) alert on the invalid rapid HIV test kits 'SD Bioline' went out last month to all Global Funds recipient nations including Tanzania, the kits are still is use in the country. 

  31 December 2011 | IPPmedia

• Kenya recalls 'faulty' South Korean HIV kits

  Kenya has recalled one million HIV testing kits because of fears about their accuracy, a health official has said. The WHO had raised an alert about the kit after finding half the test results could be wrong, said Shahnaz Sharif. 

  29 December 2011 | BBC News

• Kenya: HIV Testing Kits Recalled Over Accuracy Fears

  More than one million HIV testing kits have been recalled following a global alert by the World Health Organisation over their accuracy.

  29 December 2011 | AllAfrica

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