This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Data fail to support non-targeted HIV screening in EDs

d’Almeida KW. Arch Intern Med. 2011:doi:10.1001/archinternmed.2011.535.

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Non-targeted HIV testing in EDs was feasible, but only a few new HIV diagnoses were identified — often at a late stage — and most were in high-risk patients, according to findings from the Archives of Internal Medicine.

International health agencies have promoted non-targeted HIV screening in health care settings, including EDs, which is controversial and has yet to be tested on a large scale, according to background information in the study.

Anne-Claude Crémieux, MD, PhD, of the Hôpital Raymond-Poincaré, and colleagues assessed the public health effect of non-targeted HIV rapid testing among participants aged 18 to 64 years who were treated across 29 EDs in the metropolitan area of Paris. This area is where half of France’s new HIV cases are diagnosed annually, according to the researchers.

Anne-Claude Crémieux, MD, PhD

Comparisons were made between the number of patients tested for HIV and the proportion of new diagnoses vs. the general metropolitan Paris population between May 2009 and September 2010.

Of 138,691 ED visits, 27% of patients were offered HIV rapid testing; 63.1% of whom accepted testing, and 16.3% were tested. Eighteen patients received new HIV diagnoses (0.14%; 95% CI, 0.08-0.22).

Overall, most newly diagnosed HIV infections belonged to a high-risk group (n=17); were previously tested (n=12); and were either symptomatic or had a CD4 lymphocyte count lower than 350/mcL, suggesting late-stage infections (n=8).

“Implementation of non-targeted HIV screening of the general population in EDs is poorly effective,” Crémieux told Infectious Disease News. “In low HIV prevalence countries with concentrated epidemics, repeat-targeted screening of subpopulations at high risk, based on very few demographic or behavioral characteristics, should be a more effective, less time-consuming and costly way to improve HIV screening.” – by Ashley DeNyse

Disclosure: This study was funded by grants from ANRS (Agence Nationale de Recherche sur le Sida et les Hepatites Virales) and Sidaction, Paris, France. Rapid tests were provided for free from OraSure Technologies Inc., Bethlehem, Pa.

Follow InfectiousDiseaseNews.com on Twitter.