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Loading ...FDA approves new HIV blood test
01.05.2009 12:02pm EST
(Washington) Federal regulators have approved a new HIV test that screens for two, less common forms of the virus.
The Food and Drug Administration said the TaqScreen MPX Test is the first to simultaneously detect HIV-2 and HIV-1 Group O strains. Both types of HIV are mainly found among patients in Africa, but the FDA said they have recently been detected in the U.S.The test, which is made by a division of Swiss drugmaker Roche, also screens for the most common forms of HIV and hepatitis.
The MPX test is designed to screen for infectious diseases in human blood and tissue samples from donors.
“Blood donor testing laboratories will be able to use nucleic acid technology to screen for additional HIV strains, further assuring that donated blood and tissue are free from infection,” FDA division chief Jesse Goodman said in a statement.
Other companies offering HIV tests include Abbott Laboratories and Gen-Probe Inc.
Roche Molecular Systems Inc. is based in Pleasanton, Calif.
The blood ban rule is archaic. This is from an age when HIVAids was called “gay cancer.” It’s from when people thought that HIV was transmitted by sneezing and shaking hands. It’s sad that a scientific organization continues to perpetuate such assumptions.
It’s funny that a heterosexual that has sex with a different person every day can go in and give blood but a gay person in a committed relationship can not.
Let’s hope this new testing will put the bad ban away.
Of course, men who have had a sexual experience with another man since the 70’s are still not allowed to donate blood, so this test must not significanly diminish the statistical potential for HIV in America’s blood supplies, correct? Otherwise that inane rule would be abolished, correct?
I wonder if this will being laying the groundwork for the FDA to lift the useless ban on Gay men donating blood. This is great news!