It has been more than 20 years since HIV has changed the scenario of the world we live in. This epidemic continues to spread. During the early stages of the infection, HIV doesn’t show any particular symptoms or in some cases no symptoms appear at all, so HIV diagnosis becomes important. In general the, HIV diagnosis involves testing a person's body fluids (which may be blood, saliva or urine).Various test are available for the same. But out of all of them two tests are commonly used for HIV diagnosis - the one which is responsible for checking the presence of antibodies produced in the body in response to HIV infection and the other that is responsible for detecting the virus itself. Also the importance of early HIV diagnosis cannot be overlooked. A person with HIV infection is termed HIV- positive or seropositive.

As specified above, the presence of antibodies in the blood being an important factor for HIV diagnosis, can be explained as: Antibodies are the proteins which are produced by the body in response to any infection inside the body to fight against the infection. So, when the body is HIV infected, it leads to the production of the antibodies which are specific to HIV. In order to look for such antibodies the test which is carried out is known as the ELISA (Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay) test. If such antibodies are present in the blood, then this test gives a positive result. If the result of the test is positive then it is further confirmed by another test known as the Western Blot Test or Immunoflouroscent Assay (IFA). Since all the positive tests conducted using ELISA may not be positive so the western blot test is further used in order to confirm a person's HIV status. But since an ELISA test requires time, in order to yield quick results the RAPID TESTING is used and this is similar to ELISA in terms of accuracy. The other blood tests apart from the above stated tests used for HIV diagnosis are:

1. Radioimmunoprecipitation assay (RIPA)
2. Dot-blot immunobinding assay
3. Nucleic acid testing

The other important tests carried using other body fluids for HIV diagnosis is:

PCR:
It is one of the specialized HIV blood test that looks for HIV genetic information. It is comparatively costly and labor-intensive, but can detect the virus even in someone who is recently infected in comparison to the ELISA test.

Urine HIV Test:
It is carried out using a person’s urine. A urine HIV test is not as appropriate or sensitive as a blood test.

Oral HIV Test:
Fluid is taken from inside the mouth (saliva) or even in some cases using cells from the inside of the cheek and analyzed using an EIA test and followed by Western blot test, if necessary.

Also these days various kinds of home kits are available in the market to for the HIV diagnosis. However, it should be noted that if a person is likely to be HIV infected and the test results are negative then there should be a repetition of the test after three to six months when the antibodies are likely to have developed. We should not be reluctant to get HIV diagnosis done as if the problem is known in first place then only a solution to the same can be found.