Use of AIDS antibody test

Licensure and increasingly widespread use of tests for antibodies—in donor blood—to the retrovirus associated with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), should permit much more detailed study of the AIDS problem. Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services and Food and Drug Administration announced that Abbott Laboratories, North Chicago, Ill, is the first to be licensed to market screening test kits for checking for the presence of antibodies to AIDS. Shipments of the kits—at a charge of between $2 and $3 apiece—began that same day (March 2) to blood banks. The availability of the test opens the door to a whole series of epidemiologic studies, says Harold Jaffe, MD, of the Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, and a member of that agency's AIDS task force. Jaffe spoke—on the eve of test licensure—at a workshop on AIDS viral antibody detection held by the Food and Drug Administration (Rockville, Md) and