What can cause a False positive HIV test?

Answer 1

First and foremost: Clarify any medical questions and concerns, particularly about an important diagnostic result, with you physician and other medical professionals. Don't rely on any website for medical information or advice.

"False positive" is a statistical idea used to assess how accurate a test is. If a test give a "false positives" then it reports positive when in fact the material being tested for is NOT there. The opposite is a "false negative" when the test does not detect the material of interest when it is actually present. The best test have low rates of both fales positives and false negatives.

This is a way of assessing the inevitable imperfections of various screens and tests. So, when you first receive the screening results, your medical professional would never say "I got your screen, and it says here that it is a false positive". If the lab processing your screen knows that it's a false positive when they process it, they wouldn't report it as a positive. But more important, they could never know that your result is a false positive. All they can know is that according to procedures, and with everything properly done, the result on this particular screen came out 'positive'.

A result is exposed as a false positive only when adequate and competent followup is completed, and this followup tells you that the true result is negative. So if your medical professionals have concluded after adequate followup that a result is a false positive, it means that you do not have whatever was tested for.

Answer 2

On several sites I ran across this list of dozens of factors known to cause false positive HIV antibody test results: http://www.tig.org.za/pdf-files/affidavit-aug06/54%20Factors%20known%20to%20cause%20false%20positives.pdf

Answer 3

False positives are very rare when being tested for HIV. However, there are occasions when a test result may be returned positive intially only to get a negative confirmatory result.

HIV testing is a complex process. Most HIV tests are not looking for the HIV virus, but anitbodies produced by a person after they are infected with HIV. These antibodies may resemble other antibodies produced in response to other infections (Syphilis).

Also, there may have been an issue when transporting texting kits, or perhaps the manufacturer of the kits needs to be notified that a particular lot # of tests isn't working correctly.

Cases of false-positive test results do happen, but they are very infrequent. Over 99% of the time, HIV tests are accurate the first time.

Answer 4

Your body begins to produce anti-HIV antibodies once it find out it has been infected.
So yes, it does.

Answer 5

if your partner is clean and the only needle used is for insulin which is a clean needle every time can you get hiv from this? and also what is a false positive for blood work for hiv

Answer 6

if its positive you do have the virus