Detecting human immunodeficiency virus RNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells by nucleic acid hybridization

We have developed a nucleic acid hybridization assay for detecting human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) RNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. This assay can detect HIV RNA in 10(2) cultured lymphoblastoid cells infected with HIV; it only weakly crossreacts with the RNA of HTLV-I or HTLV-II. For 39 (80%) of 49 seropositive subjects, we detected HIV sequences in the RNA from 10(6) peripheral blood mononuclear cells. In contrast, we could not detect HIV DNA in samples of DNA from the same number of cells from any of 39 seropositive individuals tested. Three of 33 seronegative individuals had false-positive results. Nevertheless, because we found an excellent correlation between results from our assay and culture of HIV from peripheral blood mononuclear cells of seropositive subjects, it is unlikely that positive cultures of HIV from these cells reflect latent infection. Nucleic acid hybridization offers a more rapid, simple, and inexpensive alternative to culture for detecting HIV-infected peripheral blood mononuclear cells.