![]() ![]() “In that case, you should get a confirmatory test.” “These findings indicate that if you didn’t have signs and symptoms of genital herpes and were diagnosed by an (immunoassay antibody) test alone and had a low positive index value, there’s a 50-50 chance the test was wrong,” Wald said. Of the 381 patients who tested positively, only 50.7 percent were confirmed as infected with the blot test. ![]() More troubling were the antibody test results for HSV-2. However, the immunoassay missed about 30 percent of those whose HSV-1 infection was positively identified with the blot test. This test, called the UW Western Blot is considered a highly accurate, “gold standard” test.įor HSV-1, the researchers found that, among the 278 people whose immunoassay registered as positive, 255 were confirmed infected by blot test, suggesting that a positive immunoassay result for HSV-1 is likely reliable. To assess the tests’ reliability, the UW researchers reviewed the charts of 864 patients from a private sexually transmitted disease clinic in Portland, Oregon, who had been tested for herpes simplex virus antibodies with one of the commercially available immunoassays and who then sought a follow-up confirmation test developed in the UW laboratories. No detected antibodies indicates no infection.Įlectron microscope image of herpes simplex viruses. When the antibodies are detected, the test is positive, meaning that the person is infected by the virus. These tests, called enzyme-linked immunoassays, detect the presence of antibodies to the herpes simplex viruses in a person’s blood. The investigators examined results from FDA-approved tests used to diagnose HSV-2 and herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1), the most common cause of cold sores. “These tests aren’t as good as they ought to be, given that they are used to diagnose someone with a chronic, lifelong sexually transmitted disease.” Wald directs UW’s Virology Research Clinic and is a professor of medicine, epidemiology, and laboratory medicine. The high rate of false-positive HSV-2 tests was particularly troubling, said Dr. In nearly half of patients with commercial test results indicating that they were infected with the most common cause of recurrent genital herpes, herpes simplex virus 2 (HSV-2), a subsequent test showed that the initial diagnosis was incorrect, the researchers report in a paper published today in the journal Sexually Transmitted Diseases. Anna Wald directs the UW's Virology Research Clinic. Tests commonly used to diagnose oral and genital herpes are often unreliable, missing some cases of infection and, in others, identifying an infection that does not exist, say researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine.ĭr. ![]()
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