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Growing Acceptance of HIV Testing and Expanded
Use of the HIV Rapid Test Dramatically Increase Counseling, Testing
and Diagnosis of HIV
An
analysis of nationwide survey data found that the proportion of
adults ever tested for HIV while visiting their doctors more than
doubled between 1998 and 2002, according to a presentation this
week at the 2005 National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta,
GA.
Based on responses
from more than 31,000 people surveyed in each of the two years,
researchers at Central Michigan University determined that the proportion
of people tested for HIV during “routine medical checkups or surgical
procedures” increased from 11 percent of people ever tested in 1998
to 25 percent in 2002.
The
study is one of the first to show, on a national scale, the growing
acceptance of testing in routine medical settings (Presentation
M3-L0303).
“Knowing your
HIV status is key to protecting your health and that of your sexual
partners,” said CDC’s Dr. Valdiserri. “Ensuring that people have
access to testing and receive their HIV test results – along with
post-test prevention counseling – is essential to reducing the number
of new HIV infections in the U.S. Voluntary testing links people
at risk for HIV to counseling to help them stay uninfected, and
helps ensure that HIV-positive individuals are linked with medical
care and prevention services to help them protect others from infection.”
Expanded
HIV testing initiatives in New Jersey are significantly
increasing the number of people who learn their HIV status and receive
risk-reduction counseling.
A New Jersey
state program to expand availability of a rapid HIV test (OraQuick®)
increased by 52 percent the proportion of individuals
statewide who received post-test HIV prevention counseling and their
results, compared to previous efforts using conventional testing
techniques.
Conventional
techniques, including the standard ELISA test, require blood samples
to be sent to a lab and take up to two weeks for processing results.
Among people
tested through this program, the HIV prevalence rate was found to
be 15 percent higher than among those tested statewide before the
rapid test was available (2.3 % vs. 2.0% of people tested). This
finding suggests the program is more effectively reaching high-risk
individuals, including minority populations (Presentation MP-039).
A
$2 million multimedia campaign during the summer of 2004 is largely
credited with a 135 percent increase in the number of rapid tests,
and a 42 percent increase in the number of all types of HIV tests,
conducted statewide (Presentation MP-037).
06/15/05
Source
US Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Additional
Test Topics
•
Genotype Resistance
Testing
•
Phenotype Resistance
Testing
•
HIV RNA and HIV bDNA Testing
•
Resistance Testing
•
CD4 T Cell Count/ Percent
•
CD8 T Cell Count/ Percent
•
CD4+
and CD8 in Whole Blood
•
HIV Antibody
•
HIV p24 Antigen
•
HIV-1 Fitness Assay
•
HIV
Proviral DNA Testing
•
Kinetic
PCR
•
Lymphocyte Count
•
Neopterin
•
Nucleic Acid Screening
Test
•
PI
Quantification
•
Protease
Assay
•
Positron
Emission Topography
•
Replicative Fitness
•
Replication
Capacity Tests
•
real-time DNA PCR (RT
DNA-PCR)
•
Therapeutic
Drug Monitoring (TDM)
•
Virco
Antivirogram
•
Virtual Phenotype
Resistance Testing
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