General aspects on the diagnosis of HIV infection.

For the laboratory diagnosis of HIV infection antibody assays with unprecedented sensitivity and specificity have been developed. In combination with proper confirmatory tests, these assays enable an accurate diagnosis of HIV infection to be made in almost all cases. In special cases, most notably during very early infection, in seronegative individuals with strong suspicion of infection and in babies of infected mothers, other methods, in particular antigen detection, HIV isolation and PCR, may be utilized.