Detection of antibodies to human immunodeficiency virus type 1 in whole blood and saliva by using a passive hemagglutination test.

A passive hemagglutination test (PHA) for detecting human immunodeficiency virus type 1 antibodies in serum samples by using envelope glycoprotein (gp160)-coupled sheep erythrocytes was described earlier (M.B. Vasudevachari, K. U. Uffelman, T.C. Mast, R.L. Dewar, V. Natarajan, H.C. Lane, and N.P. Salzman, J. Clin. Microbiol. 27:179-181, 1989). In the study reported here, the applicability of the PHA test to the detection of antibodies in whole-blood and saliva samples has been investigated. We observed a 100% correlation between PHA and commercial enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in 101 whole-blood samples and 98% correlation between PHA and reactivity to envelope proteins in Western blots (immunoblots) of 53 saliva samples. Furthermore, salivary antibodies could be detected in 19 of the 22 seropositive individuals. As in serum, antibodies to envelope proteins were widely prevalent in all the Western blot-reactive saliva samples.