Evaluation of Blood-Based Antibody Rapid Testing for HIV Early Therapy: A Meta-Analysis of the Evidence.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Western blot (WB) assay is considered the gold standard test for HIV infection confirmation. However, it requires technical expertise and is quite time-consuming. WHO recommends blood-based rapid diagnosis to achieve same-day test and treatment. However, this rapid testing strategy has not been promoted worldwide due to inadequate research evaluating the effectiveness of rapid tests (RTs) as an alternative confirmatory HIV test for WB. This study aims to compare the diagnostic performance of rapid HIV tests compared with WB.

Methods

PubMed and Web of Science were searched for publications on rapid HIV tests using blood specimen. A meta-analysis was performed to quantitatively evaluate the diagnostic performance of rapid HIV tests compared with the WB assay in term

SUBMITTER: Huang X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6036269 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature