Usefulness of Oral Mucosal Transudate for HIV Antibody Testing

Le résumé fourni par la source

To the Editor. —Several errors in the study by Ms Gallo and colleagues1preclude this unblinded study's conclusions. The most important is the miscalculation of sensitivity and specificity and, therefore, predictive values for detection of HIV infection. As their mathematical basis for calculation, the authors cite Vecchio,2who published methods for statistical calculation of a single diagnostic test, yet disregard his formula. According to Vecchio, sensitivity=(diseased persons with positive test/ all diseased persons tested)ϰ 100, which yields a sensitivity of 98.8% for the OraSure device using the authors' published data. Vecchio's calculation for specificity is likewise 99.6% for their tabulated data and 99.9% for their textual data. However, the authors ignored Vecchio's formula and used equivocal or indeterminate results as both true positives and true negatives to inflate their sensitivity and specificity data.

Ce résumé expose les affirmations des auteurs. BNTIC ne l’interprète pas comme une validation indépendante des résultats.