Brown researchers create first-ever HIV rapid ...( PROVIDENCE R.I. [Brown University] ...),Health

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] Researchers at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University have created the first educational video for patients to explain rapid tests for HIV, a relatively new tool in the fight against the AIDS epidemic.

The video gives an overview of rapid HIV tests, which can be administered simply with a saliva swab, a finger stick or a blood draw. Results are available in minutes. Brown researchers created the video to give health care providers and outreach workers an effective, efficient way to educate their patients about HIV and rapid HIV testing.

Conventional HIV tests require days of waiting for laboratory results, which is a barrier to testing. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that many patients dont even return for their results: 30 percent who tested HIV-positive and 39 percent who tested HIV-negative in 2000.

In September 2006, the CDC recommended routine, universal HIV screening in all health care settings. The new guidelines reaffirmed the use of pre-test information to educate patients about HIV and HIV testing. Brown researchers wanted to see whether a video would help streamline the testing process and, ultimately, boost the numbers of patients getting tested for the virus.

With HIV, testing is key: If you dont know you have the virus, you wont protect others or get treatment for yourself, said Roland Merchant, M.D., an assistant professor of emergency medicine and community health at Alpert Medical School and an attending physician at Rhode Island Hospital. The power of rapid HIV testing is that results can be determined in a single healthcare visit. With rapid tests, prevention and treatment dont have to wait.

Merchant wrote and produced the video, titled Do You Know About Rapid HIV Testing?, with colleagues at Brown and the Harvard School for Public Health. Abbott Diagnostics Inc., which distributes OraQuick a rapid HIV test ap
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