Coming Soon? At-Home HIV/AIDS Testing Kit

[bcohen7719]

Your reactions on the potential impact on the professional escort community?

 

BC

 

News

Coming Soon: Over-the-Counter Oral AIDS Test

Abstract

In January, Bethlehem, Pa.-based OraSure Technologies submitted a final module of clinical test results supporting its application to sell the OraQuick rapid HIV test to the public. Food and Drug Administration approval could come this year. The test uses oral fluid or blood; it currently is used widely in clinical settings. To assess issues regarding at-home rapid HIV testing, Columbia University researchers conducted a study in which they offered the OraQuick test in an office setting to men who have sex with men, then interviewed them about their attitudes toward it. More than 80 percent said they would use the kit to test themselves or their sexual partners, according to Alex Carballo-Diéguez, Timothy Frasca, and colleagues at the HIV Center for Clinical and Behavioral Studies at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. In general, however, there was little agreement about how to raise the subject with a partner or how to handle an unexpected positive result. Some men talked about making the test a condition of forgoing condom use; others said the test might be a signal that a relationship had advanced beyond casual status. Opponents of at-home testing worry about how users would react if the test is positive. “There’s a lot of potential opposition, and clinics might not be crazy about direct access in a private setting with no personnel with them if they get a positive result,” Carballo-Diéguez said. The study’s participants gave different reactions to this scenario: Some said they would offer sympathy; a minority said they would leave at once. In a follow-up study to the paper they published this week in the Journal of Sex Research, the authors are distributing rapid test kits for use at home and asking testers to report on their experiences.

Source

http://www.crainsnewyork.com

[Irtwo]

There's been home testing kits available for awhile, but you have to send your sample into a lab by mail to get your result. Is this different because you get results instantly?

[seeker630]

There's been home testing kits available for awhile, but you have to send your sample into a lab by mail to get your result. Is this different because you get results instantly?

 

Yep - this is more like the home pregnany test - results in 20 minutes. http://www.oraquickhivtestkit.com/

 

Of course, it's an antibody test, so there's still the window in which a person is infected but could test negative.

[anotherjohnindupont]

I was going to start a new thread about it but I found this one in the archives and I decided to bring it back to life.

 

http://www.oraquick.com/?gclid=CPSQ7pianLcCFQye4AodJxIARA

 

The test is here and available. I wonder if this would make BB sex on a relationship at least safer than it is now. I have some friends who "got it from their bf", I know they all say but now you can do it yourself instead of believing in someone else's word, an act you might regret for the rest of your life.

[AdamSmith]

now you can do it yourself instead of believing in someone else's word, an act you might regret for the rest of your life.

 

For most people the window period between infection and seroconversion is said to be about 30 days; for some it can be as long as three months. Neither one is a negligible span of time in which to be infectious but not detectable via this antibody test, as seeker noted above.

 

Should this test turn out to make substantial numbers of people more inclined to unsafe/less safe sex, out of exactly that sense that it at least lowers the risk, seems this could actually spur transmission cases during the window period, even as it hopefully reduces them from patients who have converted.

 

Will be interesting to see if anyone tries to track the epidemiology of this, once usage of the test grows.

[Steven_Draker]

This week I got HIV-tested with my regular doctor and the results came alright.

 

The new thing I noticed on the paper is the mention "forth-generation HIV test p24 Antigen"

 

I found this info online http://labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/p24/tab/test however I have no idea why they used a different test and in what this test is different from the previous generation test. Probably someone who works in this field can update us with some details.

[marylander1940]

This week I got HIV-tested with my regular doctor and the results came alright.

 

The new thing I noticed on the paper is the mention "forth-generation HIV test p24 Antigen"

 

I found this info online http://labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/p24/tab/test however I have no idea why they used a different test and in what this test is different from the previous generation test. Probably someone who works in this field can update us with some details.[/color]

 

I wonder how long it will be till one of your clients asks you to take the test in front of him...

 

I have a friend who hires you regularly in Baltimore and he calls you a "condom Nazi", I'm sure you are very reliable and you want to have future after this.

[Michael Wayne]

"condom nazi" makes it sound like using them all the time is a bad thing....It is actually a good thing and nothing third reichish about it!