A. It's important to dispose of unused medication. To find out how, contact your state health agency or follow U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines for drug disposal.
The HIV test is designed to detect antibodies to HIV in your blood or saliva. Antibodies are proteins produced by your body when you have an infection and they help fight infection. If you are infected with HIV, your body makes very specific antibodies to fight the infection. The HIV antibodies are different from antibodies for the flu, hepatitis, or other infections.
As more serious symptoms and complications appear, the HIV infection may then meet the official definition of AIDS: a positive HIV-antibody ELISA followed by a confirmatory Western Blot test or other HIV virologic test (HIV nucleic acid test, HIV p24 antigen test, HIV viral culture) and either the onset of an AIDS-defining infection or cancer, or ...