OraSure Technologies, Inc. HIV Home Test Won't Stem Disease, Editorial Says

OraSure Technologies Inc. (OSUR)’s OraQuick, which allows people to screen for HIV at home, won’t help slow transmissions of the virus, a public health specialist and an infectious disease doctor said in an editorial. Routine screening in doctors’ offices and clinics is the best way to identify people who don’t know they are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and get them to the right care, according to the editorial published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine. OraSure won U.S. approval for the first rapid, at-home HIV screening in July. The saliva test gives results within 20 to 40 minutes without a doctor or laboratory. The test won’t lower barriers to care because of cost and those likely to use it, said A. David Paltiel, a professor of public health and management sciences at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and Rochelle Walensky, an associate professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

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