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Updated: Aug 14, 2026
Amplifying and Quantifying HIV-1 RNA in HIV Infected Individuals with Viral Loads Below the Limit of Detection by Standard Clinical Assays
Published on: September 26, 2011
Quantification of human immunodeficiency virus type 2 (HIV-2) viral load in plasma: Comparison of three commercial
Iker Falces-Romero1, Isabel García-Pérez2, Luz Martín-Carbonero3
1Clinical Microbiology and Parasitology Department, Hospital Universitario La Paz, IdiPaz, Madrid, Spain; CIBERINFEC, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain.
Introduction:
There are few validated commercially available HIV-2 assays for the measurement of viral load. Our aim was to compare three commercial assays for the quantification of HIV-2 viral load in plasma of patients with HIV-2 infection from our hospital.
Material And Methods:
We conducted a retrospective study at our tertiary-care hospital, analyzing samples from patients with known HIV-2 infection collected between 2022 and 2023. We compared three commercial assays for quantification of the viral load, Biomérieux® NASBA assay, Thermo Fisher® digital PCR (dPCR) assay and Altona® RT-PCR assay.
Results:
A total of 27 samples from 11 different patients were included in the study. Sixteen out of them were negative across all three assays. One sample had a low viral load (<2 log copies/mL) detected by the three assays. In five samples a low viral load was only detected by the Altona® assay. The remaining five samples, all from the same patient infected by a multidrug-resistant HIV-2, showed detectable viral load up to 2 log copies/mL by the Thermo Fisher® and Altona® assays, but none of these samples were detected by the Biomérieux® assay.
Conclusions:
The Altona® RT-PCR assay and the ThermoFisher® dPCR assay could be reliable options as commercial assays for the quantification of HIV-2 RNA in plasma. However, the Biomérieux® NASBA assay, despite detecting both HIV-1 and HIV-2, may have limitations for HIV-2 detection in some cases.
