Abstract:

This analysis assessed the utility of the limiting antigen avidity assay (LAg). Samples of people who inject drugs (PWID) in Greece with documented duration of HIV-1 infection were tested by LAg. A LAg-normalized optical density (ODn) 1.5 corresponds to a recency window period of 130 days. The proportion true recent (PTR) and proportion false recent (PFR) were estimated in 28 seroconverters and in 366 samples collected >6 months after HIV diagnosis, respectively. The association between LAg ODn and HIV RNA level was evaluated in 232 persons. The PTR was 85.7%. The PFR was 20.8% but fell to 5.9% in samples from treatment-naive individuals with long-standing infection (>1 year), and to 0 in samples with the circulating recombinant form CRF35 AD. A LAg-based algorithm with a PFR of 3.3% estimated a similar incidence trend to that calculated by analyses based on HIV-1 seroconversions. In recently infected persons indicated by LAg, the median log10 HIV RNA level was high (5.30, interquartile range 4.56-5.90). LAg can help identify highly infectious HIV(+) individuals as it accurately identifies recent infections and is correlated with the HIV RNA level. It can also produce reliable estimates of HIV-1 incidence.

Notes:

Nikolopoulos, G KKatsoulidou, AKantzanou, MRokka, CTsiara, CSypsa, VParaskevis, DPsichogiou, MFriedman, SHatzakis, AengDP1 DA034989/DA/NIDA NIH HHS/P30 DA011041/DA/NIDA NIH HHS/Evaluation StudyEngland2016/10/27 06:00Epidemiol Infect. 2017 Jan;145(2):401-412. doi: 10.1017/S0950268816002417. Epub 2016 Oct 26.