You Are About to Graduate as a RN

question 43

Multiple Choice

You are about to graduate as a RN. Your final term project is to prepare a presentation on HIV/AIDS. HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) is a retrovirus—it is an enveloped single-stranded virus that has duplicate copies of a single-stranded RNA genome. All retroviruses encode reverse transcriptase, an enzyme that uses an RNA genome as a template to make a complementary DNA strand. HIV can infect a variety of human cell types, but the most important are the helper T cells (also called CD4 cells) —the virus infects these cells and causes their death; their numbers slowly decline until the immune system can no longer resist infections or tumor development. You give your presentation to the class and are asked by your professor at the end of the session to answer some questions that your peers have on diagnosing HIV.
-You tell the class that ELISAs and Western blots are performed in a clinic or laboratory. However, there are a variety of tests that can be performed at home. With the oral fluid antibody self-test, a person swabs their own mouth and uses a kit to test the sample. The kit looks similar to a pregnancy test. Saliva is collected on a swab which is then inserted into the "tube" containing a test strip on which certain HIV proteins are bound. The saliva moves up the test strip until it reaches two windows on the tube - one is labeled C and the other is labeled T.  When the saliva reacts with the bound virus proteins, a color change is seen. Results are interpreted as follows: 
No color in the C window-test is not working.
Color in the C window but none in the T window-negative result.
Color in the C window and color in the T window-positive result. 
Given this information, select the False statement.

• A) The C window is a positive control-if color appears there, it confirms that the test is working properly.
• B) The T window is the test window. If color appears both there and in the C window, it indicates that anti-HIV antibodies are present in the person's saliva.
• C) This test is an ELISA test that is used to detect antibodies in a person's saliva.
• D) If color appears in the T window but not in the C window, the kit is not working properly.
• E) This test is an ELISA test that is used to detect the presence of viral capsid proteins in a person's saliva.

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