Analysis of risk factors and evaluation of HIV testing in saliva and blood samples

With an increasing incidence of HIV infections in India and other developing countries, there is a need for sero-surveillance as a tool to monitor the AIDS epidemic on one hand and the impact of intervention strategies on the other. With an estimated 1.5 million HIV infected population in India, it has become necessary to analyse their risk behavioural pattern to design intervention methods. As collection and transport of blood samples from rural areas is a major problem in developing countries and since it has been reported that antibodies to HIV-1 would be reliably detected in saliva of HIV infected patients, the present study was conducted at Madras, India to evaluate the efficiency of saliva testing for anti-HIV in comparison with serum from the same study population. The risk factors for HIV positivity in this group was also analysed.