Two different methods in detecting HIV antibody:a comparative study on results

OBJECTIVE To compave the efficiency of enzyme-Linked immunosorbent assay(ELISA) and colloidal gold immunochromatographic(GICA) to detect the sensitivity of HIV antibodies.METHODS The lowest limit of detection was compared by using ELISA and GICA reagents from 6 reagent suppliers.RESULTS All 6 samples showed positive results by using ELISA even when samples were diluted to tens of thousands of times while large difference existed in detection sensitivity by using different reagents in GICA.None of the reagents used in GICA was able to detect positive samples with OD value lower than 0.5 in ELISA.Only one reagent was able to detect samples with OD value above 0.5 while all the other reagents were able to detect only when OD value was above 1.5-2.0.CONCLUSION The sensitivity of ELISA is significantly higher than that of GICA.It advised to be more cautious when using GICA to detect HIV antibodies.