Performance characteristics of quantification assays for human immunodeficiency virus type 1 RNA

Quantification of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is useful in obtaining information about the prognosis of patients and monitoring of antiviral therapy. Today, commercial assays based on reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), the branched DNA (bDNA) technology and on nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) are available. Clinical relevance of those assays is limited because of relatively poor reproducibility, especially for low copy numbers and unequal amplification dynamics for different genotypes. Better standardisation is most important in order to improve the reliability of quantitative molecular assays.