• Chandar Kanta Chauhan, P V M Lakshmi, Vivek Sagar, Aman Sharma, Sunil K Arora, and Rajesh Kumar.
• Department of Community Medicine, School of Public Health, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education & Research, Chandigarh, India.
• Indian J Med Res. 2020 Sep 1; 152 (3): 227-233.

Background & ObjectivesBeing more efficient and widely used, limiting antigen (LAg)-avidity enzyme immunoassay (EIA) based on the recent infection testing algorithm (RITA) has been developed for differentiating recent and established HIV-1 infection. So far, LAg-avidity EIA has not been validated among the Indian population. Hence, the present study was planned to identify recent HIV infections in high risk patients in the North-West region of India using modified LAg-avidity RITA.MethodsFour hundred HIV-positive high risk patients registered on pre-antiretroviral therapy (ART) programme in the last one year, from five ART centres in North-Western States of India, were included for identifying the recent HIV infections. One hundred HIV-positive cases registered for pre-ART for greater than two years in ART centres were included for estimating false recent rate (FRR). Single-well LAg-avidity EIA-based modified RITA was used to identify recent HIV infection cases.ResultsOf the 400 HIV-1-positive samples, 64 (16%) were found to have been infected within the past 130 days. The proportion of recent HIV infections was 16.8 per cent (18/107) among female sex workers, 10.7 per cent (9/84) among men who have sex with men and 17.7 per cent (37/209) among injecting drug users. The FRR was one per cent (1/100).Interpretation & ConclusionsLAg-avidity EIA-based modified RITA provided good discrimination between recent and non-recent HIV infection, hence, it could be considered suitable for estimating HIV incidence in sentinel surveillance system in India.

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