Abstract

RAMIREZ O, Jesús D et al. Comparative study of two comercial technical for quantification of viral load in patients infected with Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1. INHRR [online]. 2016, vol.47, n.1-2, pp.27-42. ISSN 0798-0477.

The assay for quantification of plasma HIV-1 RNA are important for the control of patients infected, as well as the monitoring of the response to antiretroviral therapy. Therefore, the commercial assays used for this purpose must submit good correlation between to give place to the appropriate therapeutic management. In this study, we correlate the results obtained through the testing of signal amplification (bDNA) and real-time PCR (RT-PCR), two comercial technical approved by the FDA and with different targets of detection HIV-1. The validation was carried out with 180 clinical samples of patients referred to the INHRR. The results were compared with the subpopulation of lymphocytes TCD4⁺ determined by flow cytometry. The statistical analysis was performed using the program SPSS Statistics v10. It was observed good correlation between the tests studied (R²=0.961, p<0.05), with RT-PCR more sensitive. The quantitative differences in viral load between the techniques tested was less than 0.5 log₁₀ copies/ml for the 89% of the samples, and >1 log₁₀ copies/ml in only two patients. Additionally, it was found an inverse correlation between lymphocytes TCD4⁺ and viral load of HIV-1, measured by bDNA (R²= 0.20, p<0.05) and RT-PCR (R²= 0.15, p<0.05). Therefore, these assays can be employed for the patient control HIV.

Keywords : HIV-1; viral load; CD4⁺; bDNA; real-time PCR.