Neither are approved for the diagnostic purpose of HIV infection. They are used to monitor the viral load of person that are infected with HIV to help in proscribing the time for one start medications and for those that are on medication to follow how well the medication is working.
by Edward W Hook, MD
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Edward W Hook, MD
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Member since Oct 2007
, Nov 13, 2008 04:54PM
Good question. Laboratory tests can be quantitative or qualitative. Qualitative tests give you a yes or no answer to whether something (like HIV) is present of not. Quantitative tests for HIV tell you how much virus is present. We use quantitative tests in caring for patients with HIV to judge how therapy is doing (it should reduce the amount of HIV virus present in blood), as well as, on some occasions, to monitor the progression of disease. For figuring out if a person has HIV or not, qualitative tests are the way to go. Just as you cannot be a little bit pregnant, you cannot be a little bit infected. Either you are or are not.
RT PCR RNA test is not a diagnostic test it is approved to be a supplemental test along with an antibody test for the detection of HIV.
hello Lizzie, I thought there are 2 kinds of test there is a qualitative and a the one for monitoring. I thaought the qualitative was to detect hiv please correct me if i am wrong. the test for the detecting hiv is dna/rne qualitative real time pcr and or proviral dna qualitative pcr
PCR tests are never conclusive. They are not approved for diagnostic testing. They are monitoring tests for people that have HIV.