Three-year analysis of confirmatory testing outcomes in individuals with positive anti-HIV screening results

• DOI: 10.5455/medscience.2024.07.069
• Publication Date: 2024-08-23T18:08:27Z
• Authors: Hacer Kalayci; Ahmet Gurpinar; Huseyin Erdal; Mustafa Calgin
• Keywords: anti-hiv; confirmatory test; R; Medicine; enzyme-linked immuno sorbent assay

Despite the increase in preventive health measures and awareness-raising efforts against HIV worldwide, it continues to be a significant global public health problem today. This study aims to determine anti-HIV seropositivity, trends in false-positive rates, and demographic characteristics of patients with reactive anti-HIV test results. In this retrospective study, anti-HIV test results of a total of 55,763 patients between January 2021 and December 2023 were analyzed. Samples were studied with anti-HIV fourth-generation ELISA test (Roche Diagnostics, Mannheim, Germany). Reactive samples were sent to the National HIV-AIDS Confirmation and Viral Hepatitis Reference Laboratory for confirmation. Of the 55,763 samples evaluated, 169 (0.30%) were found to be reactive with the anti-HIV fourth-generation ELISA test (Cobas e 601, Roche, Mannheim, Germany). The confirmation test result of 75 patients was positive and 94 patients were negative. Patients with positive confirmation test results constituted 0.13% of all patients examined. Of the patients with positive confirmation results, 68 (90.7%) were male and 7 (9.3%) were female. When we examined the age groups, the HIV positivity rates were found to be 59% in the <35 age group and 57.8% in the 35-55 age group. As a result of this retrospective study, the results of HIV seropositivity in gender and age groups were found to be consistent with both our country's data and other studies conducted in our country. The high rate of false positive results in screening tests showed the importance of confirmatory tests.