| Popis: |
The serologic diagnosis of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is currently done by detecting the presence of antibodies against the different antigenic viral proteins through immunoassays and later confirmation by Western blot. Several types of antigens can be used in immunoassays, but recombinant proteins and synthetic peptides are the most frequently used. In this paper, peptides mimicking antigenic regions from p24 (region 196-224), gp41 (region 600-614) and gp120 (region 303-338, Loop V3) proteins of HIV-1 have been used as antigens in an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay and their reactivity was screened against a panel of positive and negative sera. Six antigenic mixtures containing different amounts of each peptide were prepared, and the one consisting of 1 microgram of gp41-15, 0.5 microgram of p24-1 and 0.5 microgram of gp120-1 per well has shown the best performance to differentiate positive and negative serum samples, with sensitivity and specificity values of 99.18% and 100%, respectively. Considering the potential utilization of this system for screening of HIV infection, it would be relevant to evaluate the additional incorporation of sequences derived from Argentine local circulating viral variants to improve the diagnostic sensitivity of the assay, allowing the development of an ELISA based on specific viral sequences. |
