During an hiv testing the blood samples performance over the test is normally described in terms of certain terminologies such as sensitivity and specificity. Normally the period of time from the infection to the actual test to detect the changes is known as the window period. The mean window period for HIV-1 antibody tests is generally estimated as 22 days in the case of subtype B. Antigen testing normally minimizes the window period to approximately sixteen days and when subjected to NAT or nucleic acid testing the window period is further reduced to 12 days.
When a person experience std symptoms he or she is advised to contact the nearest std testing center for further diagnosis and medications. The performance of hiv medical tests are normally described upon certain criteria such as specificity and sensitivity where the sensitivity case determines the percentage of results that are normally positive in the presence of rapid hiv test. Specificity describes the percentage of results that will be normally negative in the absence of HIV. Sometimes certain diagnosis may produce erroneous results when performed over the allowed limitations. Erroneous results may provide false positive or false negative results in some cases leading to an entire mislead of the medication.
