AIDS Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about AIDS, including details on testing, treatment, prevention, hiv, life expectancy. | ||||||||
|
Evaluation of the NucliSens EasyQ assay in HIV-1-infected individuals in South Africa.Stevens W, Wiggill T, Horsfield P, Coetzee L, Scott LE Department of Molecular Medicine and Haematology, School of Pathology, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Witwatersrand and the National Health Laboratory Service, South Africa. wendy.stevens@nhls.ac.za We compared the performance of the NucliSens EasyQ assay (bioMerieux) combined with the manual NucliSens miniMag extraction methodology to the Roche Cobas Ampliprep/Standard Amplicor Monitor methodology (Roche Diagnostics) for HIV-1 RNA quantitation in HIV-1-infected individuals in South Africa. Plasma samples (284) from HIV sero-positive patients at different stages of infection were analyzed. The distribution of results was typical of the clinical samples received at the laboratory where 20% have viral load results <400 copies/ml (2.6 log) and 18% have viral load results >750000 copies/ml (5.8 log) using the Roche Amplicor Monitor standard assay. All statistical analyses were performed using log10-transformed values for all the variables in the analyses, i.e. log10EasyQIU/ml, and log10RNA (log10 copies/ml, Amplicor). Roche values were converted from RNA copies per ml to IU/ml by multiplying the Roche value by 0.51. HIV RNA levels quantitated by the NucliSens EasyQ assay correlated significantly with those of the Roche Cobas Amplicor Monitor assay (r=0.874, p<0.0001). Reproducibility of the NucliSens EasyQ assay in the log6IU range yielded CV variance of 1.3-2.84% for two well-trained technologists. In addition, a retrospective evaluation of the performance of the NucliSens EasyQ assay in 102 runs (2448) samples was conducted in the laboratory over a 4-month interval. Factors considered during this evaluation included time taken to perform the assay, volume requirements, number of required repeats, potential for contamination. Published 24 January 2005 in J Virol Methods, 124(1): 105-10.
© 2004-2009 AIDS Research Today. All Rights Reserved. |
| ||||||
