In Brief: HIV home test kits
This article was originally published in The Tan Sheet
Executive Summary
HIV home test kits: Study finds that an HIV infection test system involving blood samples obtained at home that are mailed to a lab is "accurate and reliable," Judith Feinberg, MD, Johns Hopkins University, told attendees at the Sept. 20 Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in San Francisco. Eighty-five percent of the blood samples were adequate to give a result; three of the 317 samples were HIV-positive. Researchers confirmed the results by drawing blood from a vein after the participants used the kit. Funding for the study was provided by J&J subsidiary Direct Access Diagnostics, which, along with Home Access Health Corp. and ChemTrak, has an application pending at FDA to market an HIV home testing kit ("The Tan Sheet" June 5, p. 7)...