Could I Get A False Positive On My STD Test?

Blame it on Harvard goggles, spiked hot chocolate at Harvard-Yale, or that blonde you picked up at Felipe’s; whatever (or whoever) the reason, you just might find yourself part of the elite group signing up for a sexually transmitted infections test at University Health Services (UHS) this semester.

Post-results, your spring break plans may be up in the air, but the accuracy of your test is not—getting a false positive is about as likely as Hillary Clinton speaking at the next Salient meeting.

According to UHS Chief of Medicine Soheyla D. Gharib, there is no chance of a false positive for herpes, gonorrhea, chlamydia, or hepatitis B and C.

Although the pap test for human papilloma virus could result in a false positive, Gharib promises that “the DNA test for HPV is very reliable.”

Syphilis diagnoses are falsely positive one percent of the time, and there is a 2.6 percent false positive rate for HIV.

“Usually, we worry more about false negatives, which sometimes can happen early in the stage of some diseases, or inadequate sampling of a specimen,” Gharib writes in an e-mail.

So don’t get too excited about not having the clap quite yet.