Panels...why the distinction?

Everybody wants certainty. Everybody wants to be sure. Everybody wants to close the case. So, how do you go about selecting the best test for your situation?

Your exposure history, the time interval from exposure, the presence or absence of symptoms, your personal emotional and intellectual make up, the funds you have available for testing, all are important factors which play a role in deciding what tests to take. Of all the factors, two are most important:

1) whether or not you have symptoms.

2) the time of exposure (when do you think you might have been infected).

If you have symptoms of any sort you should definitely consider seeing a Physician who will take your history in detail and examine the area and order appropriate testing. You can, however, while waiting for your appointment, obtain your testing through us and bring your report with you at the time of your visit. We have distinguished our Panels according to exposure times of less than 4 months and more than 4 months.

We have done this:

1) to offer you some conclusive answers when urgency to know is important.

2) to make you aware that some of your questions can only be answered after a certain amount of time from the date of exposure.

3) to avoid the expenses of retesting. Most of STD tests are antibodies tests (ELISA methodology) and they look for the presence in your blood of antibodies for the particular kind of bacterium or virus which is under scrutiny.

The appearance of antibodies in someone's blood (becoming Seropositive from a prior condition of being Seronegative) is a process which has different timing in different people and may vary, for most of the STD's, from 2-3 weeks to 4-5 months. For instance, few people may seroconvert for HIV antibodies within 2-3- weeks, the majority (90-95%) within 2-3 months and no one is known to produce antibodies after 6 months. The situation is very similar for Hepatitis B and C and Herpes infections. So people commonly end up in retesting when what is tested is not appropriate for exposure time. Other methodologies can be used to shorten the waiting time such as Cultures and DNA/RNA amplification where you do not look for your body response but for the presence of the bacterium or viruses themselves or their genetic material. This can shorten the waiting time significantly down to 2-3 days in situation such as Chlamydia and Gonorrhea and to 28 days in HIV infection. However, is always a good idea to retest for antibodies 4-6 months after exposure.