THURSDAY DEC 27, 2007 (Foodconsumer.org) -- New Jersey State became the nation's first to force pregnant women to receive HIV testing during pregnancy.   But a new study claimed that the current screening protocol is not as effective as thought.

The study led by Patterson KB from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and colleagues showed that among six infected babies whose mothers participated in North Carolina's Screening and Tracing Active Transmission Program, mothers of three babies tested positive for HIV antibody during pregnancy while mothers of another three tested negative.

The problem, according to the researchers, is that the universal prenatal HIV antibody testing is not sensitive enough to detect the so-called acute HIV infection which may not have caused much of the antibody to be detected by the time the testing was performed.

Patterson and colleagues found between Nov.1, 2002 and April 30, 2005, 443 women among the participants of the STAT program were HIV positive by antibody testing. But 15 who were HIV antibody negative by antibody testing were later found positive for HIV by RNA testing.

The senate of the State of New Jersey passed legislation to mandate pregnant women to receive HIV testing early on Wednesday, but the legislature body did not address any efficacy of the testing methodology.   Critics, however, said that the move deprived women's rights to make medical decisions and violated their privacy.

Source:

AIDS. 2007 Nov 12;21(17):2303-8.

Frequent detection of acute HIV infection in pregnant women.Patterson KB, Leone PA, Fiscus SA, Kuruc J, McCoy SI, Wolf L, Foust E, Williams D, Eron JJ, Pilcher CD.

School of Medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.