Factitious False-positive Test for HIV

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To the Editor. —In recent issues ofJAMA, we read about a patient with factitious acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) and about another patient who was misdiagnosed as having AIDS.1-3We report the case of a distraught individual who falsely represented himself as being seropositive for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) antibodies to gain enrollment into a trial of azidothymidine treatment. Report of a Case. —A 27-year-old homosexual air traffic controller referred himself to us to be enrolled in a placebo-controlled trial of azidothymidine treatment for patients with asymptomatic HIV infection. He reported that he was without symptoms and that he recently had had a positive test for antibody to HIV. Screening included confirmatory HIV antibody tests. He was randomized into the study before the results of the HIV antibody tests were known because he met all other eligibility criteria. A few weeks later he confessed that he had lied about

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