Contamination with HIV antibody may be responsible for false positive results in specimens tested on automated platforms running HIV 4th generation assays in a region of high HIV prevalence.

Introduction: In South Africa where the prevalence of HIV infection is very high, 4th generation HIV antibody/p24 antigen combo immunoassays are the tests of choice for laboratory based screening. Testing is usually performed in clinical pathology laboratories on automated analysers. To investigate the cause of false positive results on 4th generation HIV testing platforms in public sector laboratories, the performance of two automated platforms was compared in a clinical pathology setting, firstly on routine diagnostic specimens and secondly on known sero-negative samples.

Cytomegalovirus load in whole blood is more reliable for predicting and assessing CMV disease than pp65 antigenaemia.

CMV is a common cause of disease in immunocompromised patients. Because sampling of the diseased organ can be invasive, markers of systemic CMV reactivation such as pp65 and CMV viral load are commonly used to monitor patients at risk of CMV disease. In this retrospective analysis, the performance of these markers was compared in solid organ transplant recipients, patients with haematological malignancies and HIV infection.