HIV lab diagnosis

There are many lab tests that can be used for the diagnosis of HIV. Serology lab diagnosis is done based on the serological tests. Serological tests can be of two types. One is antibody test and another one is antigen test. In antibody tests generally ELISA tests are conducted. The blood is screened for any presence of HIV antibody. Antigen tests are done before the antibody tests. It can detect HIV antigens before the emergence of HIV antibody.  Virus isolation tests can be also done to detect HIV. In this test the patient’s lymphocytes are cocultivated with the blood cells of a healthy donor. The presence of the HIV can be confirmed by any reverse transcriptase seen in the culture. Virus isolation is time consuming and it can take weeks to give the results. Demonstration of viral NA can be done for the diagnosis of HIV in a person.  It is done by the help of PCR and probes technique. The prognostic tests can be useful to detect HIV are Viral load, B2-microglobulin, neopterin, serial CD4 counts and HIV antigen. Due to the increasing range of anti-HIV agents the importance of antiviral susceptibility assays is increased. Phenotypic and genotypic assays are the two types of antiviral susceptibility assays.