Faster HIV Test Now Approved by FDA
Written by Jane Starlingham on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010
Faster HIV Test Now Approved by FDA – They always say that in most of the fatal diseases, an early detection always pays off. That’s why, medical researchers has been doing their very best to detect fatal diseases like HIV as soon as possible. This disease has been killing millions already and most of the time the reason for death of most of the patients is late detection.
Now, a phenomenal ARCHITECT HIV Ag/Ab Combo assay has been developed and the Food and Drug Administration has approved it Monday. It is developed by Abbott Laboratories and will be used to diagnose both HIV-1 and HIV-2 infections in adults, pregnant women and children 2 years and older.
This highly sensitive new assay – or test that determines a substance’s composition – will be used to diagnose infection before antibodies actually appear, whereas most current tests catch only antibodies. – CNN
Dr. Karen Midthun, acting director of FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research said that “The approval of this assay represents an advancement in our ability to better diagnose HIV infection in diagnostic settings where nucleic acid testing to detect the virus itself is not routinely used… It provides for more sensitive detection of recent HIV infections compared with antibody tests alone.”
Abbott believes this test will make a difference. “Every nine and a half minutes someone in the United States is infected with HIV. That’s 56,000 new cases each year – enough to fill the baseball stadium in many U.S. cities,” says John Hackett, Jr.., Ph.D., research fellow and manager, emerging pathogens and Virus Discovery, Abbott.
This test is still not free from critics which is really inevitable in the medical parlance.