Chemiluminescence in HIV Detection

The Chemiluminescence in HIV detection Is one of the safest tests to rule out a person suffering from this disease.

He HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) is a sexually transmitted infection, blood or fluid, deadly and very common these days, so its detection is crucial to prevent new infections and provide timely treatment.

Until recently, the only AIDS tests that existed were based on the detection of antibodies.

Antibodies are the cells that produce the immune system to fight an antigen (virus, bacteria, etc...)

The formation of antibodies to AIDS usually takes up to 90 days (3 months), this period is called the window of infection.

During this phase, the virus is replicating within the cells and its amount is not sufficient to cause the creation of specific antibodies (Natural Killer) and therefore can not be detected in blood by the traditional tests.

It is because of the above that the importance of chemiluminescence in the detection of AIDS is an invaluable contribution that has come to revolutionize the detection of viruses in the blood.

Chemiluminescence in HIV Detection

Chemiluminescence is a laboratory technique that relies on the use of light that is released in some chemical reactions to detect the presence of the virus and not the antibody.

The possibility of detecting viruses within a week after inoculation reduces the risk of transmitting the disease due to lack of knowledge of the virus.

It has also been shown that, psychologically, the stress of believing to be infected causes emotional maladjustment and depression, so reducing a 3-month period of uncertainty to 1 week is an invaluable benefit for all counselors in HIV support groups.

How does it work?

To carry out the test, an enzyme-substrate reaction needs to be triggered and this causes an oxidative reaction of a substance that causes luminescence .

In this case the enzyme-substrate reaction is the plasma of the patient's blood (where it may or may not be the virus after one week of infection), and the antibody against the AIDS virus.

When the antibody and virus bind, they will carry out the enzyme-substrate reaction, and the substance that will cause the luminescence will activate and emit a brightness that will give a positive result.

If there is no virus to which the antibodies adhere, then there will be no reaction and the test will not emit any brightness, which will be considered a negative result.

The test itself lasts only 15 minutes, since the antibodies to the HIV virus attached to the luminescent are already taken as a reagent in the laboratory.

It is only necessary to separate the plasma from the patient's blood to add this substance and see the results under a black spotlight.

Another advantage of this laboratory test is that there are no false negatives. In previous AIDS tests many of the negative results were false.

Although 3 months had passed since the infection, each body was different and some of the patients took more than 3 months to produce specific antibodies, so the tests were inconclusive until a period of 3 months after the first test.

The problem with the previous situation was that the patient, believing himself healthy, did not give the necessary importance to use a contraceptive method of barrier and this caused more infections.

It also happened that because he did not have the certainty of not having been infected, there were drastic changes in his behavior that did not allow him to carry out a normal life during this period.

Now, by having a definitive test in minutes and only a few days of risky contact, it is expected that the window of infection will be reduced and with it the number of infections.

On the contrary, it is expected that the number of patients with timely care and a slightly more favorable prognosis will increase.

References

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