What Do These HIV Test Results Indicate?
What does reactive mean?
Reactive test means that individual is having the disease.
Detailed Answer:
Hi,
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Thanks for posting your query.
Interpretation of a test result expressed as 'reactive' means that the individual had been infected with that disease whereas 'non reactive' means that either the individual has not been infected with that organism or remain within the widow period for that test. (That is disease might be present and and the test is not able to identify - body will take sometime to produce antibodies against any disease during which time the test would show negative in presence of the disease). It has to be correlated with history, clinical findings and supporting confirmatory tests. Negative means the test is not able to pick up any evidence for the disease as there may be no disease or it might be earlier to detect.
Dr S.Murugan