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HIV infection often is spread by people who don’t know they have it. Therefore, early detection is critical to HIV prevention. Rapid oral HIV testing could facilitate early detection in busy healthcare settings. Researchers examined the specificity of oral rapid HIV testing among 854 patients in an emergency department (ED) who agreed to participate in a trial on routine HIV testing.
Of 849 patients with interpretable test results, 39 had reactive test results; 31 agreed to confirmatory testing, and only 5 were confirmed as HIV-infected. The other 26 rapid tests were confirmed as false-positives, according to Western blot, enzyme immunoassay, and HIV RNA testing. Assuming that all patients with HIV infection had positive rapid tests (i.e., 1…