Seriously anxious about HIV

[Telstra]

So "Non reactive" means negative ?

How about your mold? you said more and more mold appeared ?

 

[RaKroma]

Congrats that you got the best news!! Isn't quiet bizarre that 2 ELISAs gave false-positive reactions? Did you ask the doctor if this means that you will always turn positive on ELISAs for future testing? Your bf might or might not get freaked out about your story, so get him tested to give him psychological assurance.

 

[fed1983]

@Telstra, Yes, non-reactive means negative. The test didn't react to any HIV antibodies. The doctor used the words negative anyway, so there's no doubt about it. I'm not sure if you use the term 'non-reactive' in English...

The warts didn't come back after the treatment, so everything was solved on that side.

@RaKroma, I hope my bf doesn't get paranoid, I'll have to be very clever about how to tell the story, and take all the drama out of it.

I also had the same question about future ELISA testings. At the moment I forgot about everything so I didn't ask. So if any specialist here knows if I'm going to be positive-ELISA for the rest of my life, or if it's only temporary, I'd be happy to read your comments.

It'll be traumatic to go through another HIV-testing again, but one day I'll have to do it unless I turn into a nun.

 

[KaraBulut]

I'm not sure if you use the term 'non-reactive' in English...

The term "non-reactive" is used for all tests of this type. The test is very similar to the dipstick tests used for women's urine pregnancy tests- if it reacts (i.e. turns blue), you're pregnant.

Isn't quiet bizarre that 2 ELISAs gave false-positive reactions? Did you ask the doctor if this means that you will always turn positive on ELISAs for future testing? Your bf might or might not get freaked out about your story, so get him tested to give him psychological assurance.

The way these tests work is unusual. If you're not a medigeek, you can skip the rest of this post.

Pure human plasma will almost always react and create a positive analytic immunoassay (ELISA or EIA) test result.

The HIV antibody test uses diluted plasma which lowers the concentration of antibody in the sample. If diluted plasma reacts, it's an indication of very high concentration of HIV antibody which indicates that there has been an exposure of enough significance to cause infection.

The ELISA/EIA tests are designed to use plasma at a dilution that creates anywhere from a 3-5% false positive. The decision was made during design of the test to err on the side of false positives to reduce false-negatives. Because there's a window of 2-8 weeks before enough anti-HIV antibody is produced, this also makes the test an accurate screening test.

Normally, if you have a positive ELISA/EIA, the lab automatically does a Western Blot to confirm. You would get results of both tests at the same time. The Western Blot has a much lower incidence of false positive, so between the two tests, the accuracy rate is about 99%.

This is a fairly rare occurrence but we have seen people with other infections like Lyme Disease or who have autoimmune disorders who have enough non-specific antibody levels in their blood that they will show a false positive ELISA using the standard dilution. And even in the case of a positive Western Blot, another collection would be done for a viral load test to confirm the presence of HIV antigen in the blood.