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Review
. 2022 Nov 1;12(11):2657.
doi: 10.3390/diagnostics12112657.

Recent HIV Infection: Diagnosis and Public Health Implications

Georgios K Nikolopoulos  1 , Andreas G Tsantes  2
Affiliations
Review

Recent HIV Infection: Diagnosis and Public Health Implications

Georgios K Nikolopoulos et al. Diagnostics (Basel). .

Abstract

The early period of infection with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) has been associated with higher infectiousness and, consequently, with more transmission events. Over the last 30 years, assays have been developed that can detect viral and immune biomarkers during the first months of HIV infection. Some of them depend on the functional properties of antibodies including their changing titers or the increasing strength of binding with antigens over time. There have been efforts to estimate HIV incidence using antibody-based assays that detect recent HIV infection along with other laboratory and clinical information. Moreover, some interventions are based on the identification of people who were recently infected by HIV. This review summarizes the evolution of efforts to develop assays for the detection of recent HIV infection and to use these assays for the cross-sectional estimation of HIV incidence or for prevention purposes.

Keywords: HIV; HIV incidence; prevention; recent infection.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Viral and serological markers during recent HIV infection and evolution of HIV diagnostic assays (adapted from [57]).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Example of the flow of a recent infection test algorithm.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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