HIV INCIDENCE TESTING
In addition to creating innovative HIV diagnostic testing tools, Calypte is committed to providing specialty products for researchers and public health officials. Our HIV surveillance tests help researchers gain deeper insight into how HIV is affecting populations beyond traditional prevalence estimates. Prevalence estimates - typically derived from data gathered through HIV screening programs - measure the percentage of people in a given population that are HIV infected at a certain point in time. While valuable, prevalence estimates do not provide an adequate epidemiological picture.
Because HIV incidence measures how many infections in a population were recently acquired, it’s a much better measure of how quickly the disease is spreading. HIV incidence testing is useful for evaluating the success of intervention programs and for optimizing strategies, polices and resources. If we understand how quickly HIV is spreading in a population, we can:
- Identify and intervene quickly in hot spots to reduce transmission rates
- Measure the success of intervention efforts
- Allocate resources more effectively
- Identify populations well suited to vaccine trials
Incidence estimates cannot be obtained without using modified screening tests or specialized HIV incidence tests. Calypte Biomedical is dedicated to the support of HIV incidence testing and offers an immunoassay for this purpose. A rapid test to be used for the estimation of HIV-1 is also currently under development in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Calypte Biomedical Corporation develops
point-of-care diagnostic HIV tests
and HIV incidence testing systems.
The Calypte Aware™
rapid oral fluid HIV test,
blood HIV test, and urine HIV test offer unrivalled
rapid HIV 1/2 testing flexibility in a non-laboratory setting.