Good Performance of Rapid Prostate-Specific Antigen Test for Detection of Semen Exposure in Women: Implications for Qualitative Research

BACKGROUND: Prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is a valid biomarker of semen exposure in women and has been used to assess reliability of self-reported sexual behavior as well as serve as a proxy measure for condom efficacy. Quantitative PSA tests are expensive and require specialized equipment. A simple, rapid, and inexpensive test for PSA would facilitate semen biomarker evaluation in a variety of research settings. This study evaluated the performance of a rapid PSA test compared with a quantitative assay to identify semen in vaginal swab specimens. METHODS: We tested 581 vaginal swabs collected from 492 women participating in 2 separate research studies in Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. PSA in vaginal secretions was detected using the quantitative IMx (Abbott Laboratories) assay and the…