Anti-HIV-1 antibodies based confirmatory results in Wuhan, China, 2012-2018

• Published in: PloS one Vol. 15; no. 9; p. e0238282
• Main Authors: Liu, Pan, Tang, Li, Kong, Wen-Hua, Zhu, Ze-Rong, Xiao, Peng, Wang, Xia, Zhou, Wang, Liu, Man-Qing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: San Francisco Public Library of Science 11.09.2020; Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subjects: Acquired immune deficiency syndrome; AIDS; Anti-antibodies; Antibodies; Antiviral agents; Biology and Life Sciences; Data collection; Diagnosis; Disease control; Disease prevention; Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay; Enzymes; Glycoprotein gp120; Glycoprotein gp160; Glycoprotein gp41; Health aspects; HIV; HIV antibodies; HIV infections; HIV tests; Human immunodeficiency virus; Infections; Laboratories; Medical diagnosis; Medical screening; Medical tests; Medicine and Health Sciences; Methods; Recombination; Research and Analysis Methods; China
• DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0238282
• ISSN: 1932-6203

The number, intensity and order of emergence of HIV-1 specific antibodies in serum or plasma were associated with the stage of HIV-1 infection. In this study, we retrospectively analyzed the HIV-1 confirmatory results tested by western blot (WB) or recombination immunoblot assay (RIBA) in Wuhan, 2012-2018, to access the profiles of HIV-1 specific antibodies. A total of 14432 HIV-suspected serum or plasma samples collected from local hospitals and other HIV screening laboratories were further screened by two 4.sup.th generation enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) kits in our laboratory, of which 11068 specimens (76.69%) had at least one positive ELISA result and thereby were finally confirmed with WB or RIBA. RIBA had identified 652 (81.09%) positive and 13 (1.62%) indeterminate cases from July 1, 2014 to January 7, 2015, while WB had identified 8358 (81.43%) positive and 643 (6.26%) indeterminate cases in the other times during 2012-2018. The indeterminate rate of WB was significant higher than that of RIBA (p<0.001). Although the number of HIV-1 infected subjects increased significantly from 2012 (n = 911) to 2018 (n = 1578), the positive rate of HIV-1 antibodies decreased markedly from 70.08% in 2012 to 58.79% in 2018 (p<0.001). The most commonly observed antibody profile was gp160+gp120+p66+(p55+)p51+gp41+p31+p24+p17+ (4131, 49.43%) for WB-MP and gp160+gp120+gp41+p31+p24+p17+ (382, 58.59%) for RIBA-WANTAI, and the absence of reactivity to three possible serologic markers for recent HIV-1 infection, p31, p66, and p51, increased significantly from 2012 to 2018, with the overall rate of 17.03%, 9.40%, and 15.15%, respectively. The suspected acute HIV-1 infection was also observed to be increased in recent years, with an overall rate of 1.00%. Our results indicated the detection rate had decreased for HIV-1 infection, but increased for suspected recent and acute HIV-1 infection during 2012-2018, reflecting the efforts of intervention among high risk population.