IUBio

[CDC News] CDC HIV/STD/TB Prevention News Update 09/23/98

*Preventionews preventionews at cdcnpin.org
Wed Sep 23 08:24:58 EST 1998


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                    PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS
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"False-Positive HIV-1 Test Results in a Low-Risk Screening 
Setting of Voluntary Blood Donation"
Journal of the American Medical Association Online 
(09/23/98-09/30/98) Vol. 280, P. 1080; Kleinman, Steven; Busch, 
Michael P.; Hall, Lisa; et al.
Researchers for the Retrovirus Epidemiology Donor Study report 
that a false HIV-1 diagnosis can result from the combination of 
enzyme immunoassay and Western blot screening in blood donor and 
other HIV-1 testing programs.  The scientists investigated the 
frequency of false positive HIV-1 results among blood donors in 
the United States at five blood centers.  Of 5 million allogeneic
and autologous blood donors who donated between 1991 and 1995, 
421 donors were diagnosed HIV-1 positive by Western blot.  
Thirty-nine of the donors (9.3 percent) met the criteria for 
false positive diagnosis due to their lack of p31 reactivity; 20 
of these individuals (51.3 percent) were shown to be 
HIV-1-negative through PCR testing.  The researchers found that 
4.8 percent of Western blot-positive donors were diagnosed 
false-positive, while 0.0004 percent of all donors tested 
false-positive for HIV-1.  The scientists suggest that donors who
lack the p31 band who receive a positive Western blot result 
should be advised that there is some uncertainty about the 
result.  They further recommend that these donors be tested by 
RNA PCR if possible and HIV serologic analysis.

comment:
Yes their are some mistakes made, however, we are still on the cusp here
and we need to do more research. Work such as this will help to eliminate
false positives, which is reported above to represent 0.0004% of all
donors tested or ~5% of those diagnosed HIV-1 positive by these screening
methods. 

> Anytime you guys want to prove just how smart you are or how good your
> data is, submit it to Reappraising AIDS.  Start with the protease
> inhibitors.  Address it to David Rasnick, 7514 Girard Ave., #1-331, La
> Jolla, CA 92037(you do know who that is, don't you?)

I see you got in contact with David. Unfortunately David does not
understand much about the PIs. I read a statement where he suggested
VX-478 has a native peptide in P2' (occupied by a sulfylbenzylamine). Can
you name me a native amino acid with such a moiety? I am quite
disappointed with his work actually. I would have thought he would have
attacked the real errors in PI work, rather than easily defendable trivia.
His work is generally the better quality of the dissidents.

  I'm sure we'd be
> willing to "carefully" evaluate your data and submit a point by point
> objective review.  David doesn't claim to be a physician and I don't
> claim to be a molecular biologist.  However, together we'll bury you.

That's good you don't make such claims, because you're a dentist and he's
an enzymologist. I don't see how you will bury anything but yourself
however, as you have so far failed to support your rhetoric with any data
whatsoever.

Have a day John!

Len...






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