[Statement: The evaluation of the Serodia-HIV and Serodia-ATLA FUJIREBIO-MILES kits].

A new test, based on agglutination of gelatin particles (PA), sensitized with viral antigens of HIV, was applied on detection of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV 1) antibody. Sensitivity compared to the ELISA tests (Organon, Dupond de Nemours and/or Elavia 2) was the same during the screening test (97.7 p. cent). Specificity was also acceptable when compared to the same tests (94 p. cent). This specificity remains acceptable with African sera (96 p. cent). During screening, 11.8 p. cent of tested sera were declared falsely positive by the Elisa classical techniques, against only 1.96 p. cent with the PA assay. The six sera remained positive with ELISA (false positives), whereas this positivity was not confirmed with the PA assay. Moreover, all the positive sera were confirmed with the Western blot HIV 1 assay (55.84 p. cent), HIV 1 + 2 (31.17 p. cent) or HIV 2 (13.0 p. cent). Amongst the five false positives pointed out in the european sera, all of them have shown in the Western blot the presence of one or two bands of the GAG protein. In this case, the assay whose easy use is attractive, can be adopted in screening serology and could be useful in African regions, as no further equipment is needed.