Despite improvement in vaccinations, Hepatitis B remains a major health concern due to the difficulty of prevention even in low endemic areas such as Europe. In this report we describe the performance characteristics of the new HBsAg Next Qualitative and HBsAg Next Confirmatory assays designed for blood screening and diagnostic purposes on the Alinity i and ARCHITECT fully automated systems. The new assays were evaluated in comparison to the ARCHITECT HBsAg Qualitative II and Confirmatory assays on seroconversion, analytical sensitivity, and mutant panels along with testing of over 400 clinical positive samples demonstrating excellent improvements in sensitivity. Additionally, specificity was shown to be improved with testing of over 6000 donors and 240 diagnostic specimens. Overall, the Alinity i & ARCHITECT HBsAg Next assays have taken a step forward in improving the detection of Hepatitis B virus.
Keywords: Acute and late infection; HBsAg; Hepatitis B virus; Sensitivity.
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