Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

False-negative HIV antibody test results.

W Preiser1, N S Brink, A Hayman

  • 1Department of Virology, Royal Free and University College Medical School, University College London, Windeyer Institute of Biomedical Science, London, United Kingdom. virology@ucl.ac.uk

Journal of Medical Virology
|November 24, 1999
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

When will South Africa take the prevention of chronic HBV infection seriously?

South African medical journal = Suid-Afrikaanse tydskrif vir geneeskunde·2026
Same author

Comment on: 'Cyberattack on the National Health Laboratory Service of South Africa - implications, response and recommendations'.

South African medical journal = Suid-Afrikaanse tydskrif vir geneeskunde·2025
Same author

Clinical spectrum of disease and outcomes in children with Omicron SARS-COV-2 infection in Cape Town, South Africa.

IJTLD open·2024
Same author

Frequency, kinetics and determinants of viable SARS-CoV-2 in bioaerosols from ambulatory COVID-19 patients infected with the Beta, Delta or Omicron variants.

Nature communications·2024
Same author

Pandemic escape plan: Discontinuing policies that have reached their expiry date.

South African medical journal = Suid-Afrikaanse tydskrif vir geneeskunde·2022
Same author

A position statement and practical guide to the use of particulate filtering facepiece respirators (N95, FFP2, or equivalent) for South African health workers exposed to respiratory pathogens including <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i> and SARS-CoV-2.

African journal of thoracic and critical care medicine·2021

Synthetic oligopeptide HIV antibody tests can fail to detect antibodies in some patients, even when confirmed by other methods. This highlights limitations in early detection and diverse HIV subtype identification.

Area of Science:

  • Immunology
  • Virology
  • Medical Diagnostics

Background:

  • HIV antibody tests require high sensitivity and broad recognition of diverse HIV subtypes.
  • Synthetic oligopeptide-based assays are used for HIV antibody detection.

Observation:

  • Three patients (recent Pakistani infection, long-term Australian infection, Ugandan AIDS) showed serum non-reactivity with a specific antiglobulin enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).
  • Presence of anti-HIV antibodies was confirmed in these patients using standard algorithms and different assay formats.

Findings:

  • The assay failure in the three cases lacked a single common explanation.
  • Early antibody response was missed in a recently infected patient, indicating oligopeptide assay insensitivity.
  • A long-term infected patient (non-clade B virus suspected) lacked detectable antibody to gp41, the target of the synthetic oligopeptides.

Related Experiment Videos

  • A Ugandan patient with a non-clade B virus, despite reacting to subtype B gp41 in Western blot, failed to react in the antiglobulin ELISA.

    • Implications:

    • There are limitations in using synthetic oligopeptide assays for detecting early HIV infection.
    • These assays may not reliably detect antibodies in individuals infected with non-clade B HIV subtypes.
    • It is difficult to prospectively identify situations where synthetic oligopeptide assays are likely to fail due to diverse reasons.