Competitive EIA for anti-HIV-2 detection in the Gambia: Use as a screening assay and to identify possible dual infections
✍ Scribed by Neil Berry; Jacques Pepin; Isatou Gaye; David Parker; Michael Jarvill; Andrew Wilkins; Hilton Whittle; Richard Tedder
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1993
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 811 KB
- Volume
- 39
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0146-6615
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The performance of a competitive EIA for the detection of HIV-2-specific antibody utilising a viral lysate antigen was assessed over a 3 year period in The Gambia, West Africa, and compared with a commercially available assay, ELAVIA-2, using three panels of sera. An immunodominant region of the transmembrane glycoprotein of an HIV-2 isolate (ANT 53) was also cloned and expressed in E. coli as a @-galactosidase fusion protein and the resulting recombinant protein substituted in place of the existing viral lysate antigen. Competitive ElAs were found to be both a specific and sensitive means of reliably determining the HIV-2 status of an individual with a high predictive value, particularly when a strategy of concordant positive results in the two ElAs was used. When either anti-HIV-2 competitive ElAs were used in conjunction with a competitive EIA for anti-HIV-I detection it was possible in the vast majority of cases to identify the virus-type infecting an individual and speciate HIV-1 and HIV-2 infections. A few sera which showed similar regression profiles when diluted over a serial tenfold dilution steps were identified as possible dual infections.