Promising HIV test turns up false positives in SF
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO - A promising new oral HIV test that uses fluid swabbed from the mouth to quickly and easily detect the virus that causes AIDS incorrectly diagnosed a quarter of the people who tested positive in San Francisco, city health officials found.
Forty-seven people who tested positive after using the OraQuick Advance HIV test in city clinics were not infected at all, the San Francisco Department of Public Health said this week.
Investigators learned of the errors after follow-up blood screenings gave the patients a clean bill of health, and health officials stopped using the test at City Clinic, the health department's primary testing location for HIV.
At the same time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approved the OraQuick test for professional use last year, is now considering a request from drug maker Orasure Technologies, of Bethlehem, Pa., to approve it for home use and over-the-counter sales. "We need to vigorously look at this," said Jeffrey Klausner, San Francisco's director of sexually transmitted disease prevention and control services. "You wouldn't want to have a home test with this problem."
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