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Lynn W. Kitchen, MD
Tulane University Medical Center New Orleans

JAMA. 1988;260(13):1882-1883.

	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.—

Schwartz et al¹ recently presented in JAMA a comprehensive summary of the current status of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) serum antibody testing. However, two points raised by the authors concerning HIV-1 antibody testing by enzyme-linked immunoassay (EI A) warrant further comment.

The authors state that "the more reactive the HIV test result, the greater the likelihood of disease. Most false-positive EI A results occur in specimens that have a low specimen-to-control optical density ratio."

I suggest that it would be more accurate to say that "the higher the absorbance value corresponding to HIV-1 antibody level, the greater the likelihood of minimally symptomatic HIV-1 infection," since loss of antibody to gag- encoded HIV-1 proteins is frequently associated with development of HIV-related disease among persons in the developed world and may complicate serodiagnosis.²I agree that a highly reactive EIA is more likely to represent a true-positive . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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