MULTICENTER EVALUATION OF A FULLY AUTOMATED SCREENING-TEST, VIDAS HIV 1+2, FOR ANTIBODIES TO HUMAN-IMMUNODEFICIENCY-VIRUS TYPE-1 AND TYPE-2

A multicenter study was done to evaluate the sensitivity, specificity, and efficiency of a new screening test for the simultaneous detection of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 and 2 (HIV-1 and HIV 2) antibodies. The VIDAS HIV 1+2 (bioMerieux, Marcy l'Etoile, France) is a fully automated enzyme-linked fluorescent immunoassay that uses synthetic peptides from immunodominant regions of gp41 of HIV-1 and gp36 of HIV-2 as antigens. A total of 2,984 samples were evaluated with this system in six different laboratories, and the results were compared to those obtained with other enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. The VIDAS HIV 1+2 assay showed a very good performance in terms of sensitivity (100%) and specificity (99.6%), requiring minimal manipulation and short incubation time (32 min) to give results similar to or better than those of the other enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays used for screening.