BETHLEHEM, Pa. (AP) – The invisible forces that move the stock market can be as mysterious as the wind.

But on Feb. 1, when shares of OraSure Technologies of Bethlehem jumped nearly 5 percent, the reason was as clear as the Texas accent in the nation’s capitol.

The night before, in his biggest speech of the year, President Bush made an unmistakable, if indirect, plug for OraSure’s marquee product, the OraQuick rapid HIV test. Not only that, but the White House press release that soon followed said the president was proposing to spend $90 million on rapid HIV testing.

“A hopeful society acts boldly to fight diseases like HIV/AIDS,” Bush said in his State of the Union Address.

The president went on to say the government would lead an effort, in collaboration with faith-based groups, “to deliver rapid HIV tests to millions, end the stigma of AIDS and come closer to the day when there are no new infections in America.”

Since the 20-minute OraQuick test is the only government-approved rapid HIV test that can detect the virus that causes AIDS in both blood and saliva, OraSure would be an obvious beneficiary of such an initiative. One other rapid HIV test, the Uni-Gold test made by Trinity Biotech of Ireland, is approved for use in non-hospital settings, but it only works with blood.

“Rapid HIV testing in the U.S., to me, means OraSure,” said Aaron Lindberg, an analyst with William Smith Special Opportunities Research, a Denver company that advises institutional investors. “Trinity is in the marketplace, but frankly, OraSure is it. OraSure is dominant.”

While several health agencies in major cities, including New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, recently raised questions about the reliability of saliva testing, the wave of concern seems to have subsided. OraSure has said its initial investigation into the matter uncovered no problems, and officials at the Centers for Disease and Control in Atlanta have repeatedly voiced their confidence in OraQuick.

“We look forward to working with the administration and its agencies,” OraSure Chief Executive Douglas Michels said in a news release.

The White House went into more detail about its plans in its press release. According to the statement, the president has proposed spending more than $90 million on the purchase and distribution of rapid HIV tests, and the tests are expected to benefit more than 3 million Americans, including 600,000 prisoners and 500,000 drug users.

“We commend the president and his administration for taking a leadership role in this effort,” Michels of OraSure said. “The president’s proposal is a clear signal of the administration’s intent to further expand the deployment of rapid HIV testing.”

In the first three quarters of last year, OraSure, which has about 200 employees, sold $4.9 million of OraQuick tests to the U.S. government. That was about a third of its total OraQuick sales during the nine-month period.

The White House did not say where the additional funding for its initiative would come from, during a time of domestic spending cuts. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the government agency that has bought OraQuick in the past, said she could not comment on the matter.

In December, a provision allocating $12 million to the department for the purchase of 1 million OraQuick HIV tests was stripped from a Congressional bill.

“Where exactly they’re going to carve it out, I don’t know,” Lindberg, the analyst, said of the funding issue. “You always have to be skeptical about politicians.”

In his address, the president specifically mentioned African-American churches, saying he hoped to work closely with them. Test kits would be distributed in areas of the country with the highest rates of newly discovered HIV cases and the highest suspected rates of undetected cases, according to the White House.

“Our organization strongly supports the need for rapid HIV testing as a means to help stem the spread of this disease,” said Debra Fraser-Howze, president of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, an advocacy group, in a news release. “The technology exists and has been successfully deployed in our communities. Our clergy-led leadership groups are more than ready to help expand that effort.”