OraQuick Rapid HIV Test Helpful in Outreach Settings

FRIDAY, Sept. 1 (HealthDay News) -- OraQuick, the only rapid HIV test approved for oral fluid, produces results that are slightly less accurate than whole blood or serum tests, but have sufficiently high specificity and sensitivity to warrant widespread use, especially in outreach settings, according to a report published in the August issue of AIDS.

Kevin P. Delaney, M.P.H., of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, and colleagues conducted four separate studies using the rapid test on whole blood and oral fluid, comparing the results with the algorithm of conventional HIV tests (the enzyme immunoassay and Western blot) used by the study sites.

When used to test whole blood from 327 people who had been identified as HIV-positive using the conventional algorithm, OraQuick had 99.7 percent sensitivity. When used to test oral fluid from the same subjects, OraQuick had 99.1 percent sensitivity.

When the rapid test was used on samples from 12,010 HIV-negative subjects, OraQuick had 99.9 percent specificity with whole blood and 99.6 percent specificity with oral fluid. In one study where specificity was only 99.0 percent, compared to 99.6-99.8 percent for the other three studies, there was a cluster of 16 false-positive oral fluid tests.

"Slightly more false-positive and false-negative results occurred with oral fluid than with whole blood, but performance with both specimen types was similar to, or better than, that of conventional enzyme immunoassays," the authors conclude.

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