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Jay A. Levy, MD
University of California San Francisco

JAMA. 1987;257(9):1176.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

I recently read in JAMA the report¹ of a Consensus Development Conference that considered methods for antibody testing and virus detection in persons infected with the human immunodeficiency virus. I was surprised that the indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) was not given much attention as a procedure for detecting or confirming the presence of antibody to the human immunodeficiency virus. This method is commonly used for the detection of antibodies to many other infectious agents.

In our laboratory and in several others throughout the country, the IFA has proved to be extremely sensitive and specific for the virus.^2-7 It is accurate using plasma and serum and it is unaffected by heat inactivation. It is easy and rapid to perform: the result can be obtained in 30 minutes. Moreover, when virus-infected cells are mixed with control cells, nonspecific staining can be readily detected.³ This technique rarely . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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