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Testing Process

The most common way of doing an HIV test is to take a small amount of blood from a person, and send it to a lab. There is another newer, less common method, called the Oral Specimen Collection Device, that can be used to collect a sample. This process involves putting a device similar to a Q-Tip between your cheek and gum for 3-5 minutes. This pulls out a sample of the mucosal transudate from deep within the cell wall. This is sent to the lab, and from there the processing is pretty much the same.

The screening process performed on the blood is either an ELISA or Synthetic Peptide (S/P) test, and an ELISA is performed on the mucosal transudate. If the test shows no evidence of antibodies to the HIV virus, a ‘negative’ lab slip is issued. If the test detects antibodies, a second ELISA or S/P is done to assure the first one was correct. All positive ELISA and S/P test results are confirmed with a confirmatory test, a Western Blot. Once a confirmatory test shows positive results, a 'positive' lab slip is issued and sent back to the clinic.