Screening for acute HIV infection in South Africa: finding acute and chronic disease*

Background

The yield of screening for acute HIV infection among general medical patients in resource‐scarce settings remains unclear. Our objective was to evaluate the strategy of using pooled HIV plasma RNA to diagnose acute HIV infection in patients with negative or discordant rapid HIV antibody tests in Durban, South Africa.

Methods

We prospectively enrolled patients with negative or discordant rapid HIV antibody tests from a routine HIV screening programme in an out‐patient department in Durban with an HIV prevalence of 48%. Study participants underwent venipuncture for pooled qualitative HIV RNA, and, if this was positive, quantitative RNA, enzyme immunoassay and Western blot (WB). Patients with negative or indeterminate WB and positive quantitative HIV RNA were considered acutely infected. Those with chronic infection (positive RNA and WB) despite negative or discordant rapid HIV tests were considered to have had false negative rapid antibody tests.

Results

Nine hundred and ninety‐four participants were enrolled with either negative (n=976) or discordant (n=18) rapid test results. Eleven [1.1%; 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.6–2.0%] had acute HIV infection, and an additional 20 (2.0%; 95% CI 1.3–3.1%) had chronic HIV infection (false negative rapid test).

Conclusions

One per cent of out‐patients with negative or discordant rapid HIV tests in Durban, South Africa had acute HIV infection readily detectable through pooled serum HIV RNA screening. Pooled RNA testing also identified an additional 2% of patients with chronic HIV infection. HIV RNA screening has the potential to identify both acute and chronic HIV infections that are otherwise missed by standard HIV testing algorithms.