The study was designed to investigate and exclude the risk of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection among blood donors, which might be transmitted to the patients. The study included 11,815 blood donors. All samples were screened throughout the study period of two years. HIV-1 and HIV-2 were determined by using enzyme immunoassay and subsequently confirmed by HIV Western blot assay. Worl...

OBJECTIVES This study was undertaken to monitor the CD4+ lymphocyte count in individuals infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and/or co-infected with Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) and to compare this with the counts in normal individuals in The Gambia. METHODS Blood samples were taken from 1500 individuals referred for HIV serology at the Royal Victoria Teaching Hospital (RVTH) followin...

Eight laboratory assays, viz., the pp65 direct antigenemia test, a quantitative cytomegalovirus (CMV)-specific immunoglobulin G (IgG) assay (Biomerieux VIDAS), a CMV-specific IgM assay (Biomerieux VIDAS), the Hybrid Capture system (Murex), an in-house PCR with plasma (P-PCR) and leukocytes (L-PCR), and a commercial PCR (Roche AMPLICOR) with plasma (P-AMP) and leukocytes (L-AMP), were compared f...

A cohort of 77 renal transplant recipients was prospectively studied for comparison of two commercially available cytomegalovirus (CMV) load assays, i.e., the COBAS AMPLICOR CMV Monitor test (Amplicor), using plasma samples, and the Murex Hybrid Capture System (HCS), using whole blood. The manufacturer of the HCS assay changed the version of the test from 1.0 (HCS-1) to 2.0 (HCS-2) after the fi...

Enzyme immunoassay (EIA) is an ideal method for screening large numbers of patients for syphilis. We evaluated a novel immune-capture EIA (ICE Syphilis; Murex Diagnostics) that uses three recombinant Treponema pallidum antigens (TpN15, TpN17, and TpN47) and compared the results with those obtained by the native T. pallidum antigen EIA (Captia SelectSyph-G; Centocor) that we currently use for th...

AIMS To examine A, C, Y, and W135 Neisseria meningitidis serogroup characterisation by ultrasonic standing wave enhanced latex agglutination tests (USELATs) of clinical samples. In addition, to determine USELAT enhancement of detection sensitivity for the individual antigens compared with conventional card latex agglutination tests (LATs). METHODS Wellcogen (Abbott Murex), Slidex meningite ki...