HIV Testing is the Answer — What's the Question?

There is reason for concern about the false positive rate in testing for antibody to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), even when the specificity of a test is high, some persons who are truly without disease will nevertheless test positive.

Abstract

There is reason for concern about the false positive rate in testing for antibody to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). Even when the specificity of a test is high, some persons who are truly without disease will nevertheless test positive. In populations in which the prevalence of disease is low, these false positive results represent a substantial proportion of all positive results, lowering the probability that a positive test result indicates true disease.1 , 2 The potential consequences of incorrectly informing a person that he or she is infected with HIV are severe: certainly anguish, fear, and depression; perhaps lost jobs, denied . . .