Use of Dried Plasma Spots for HIV-1 Viral Load Determination and Drug Resistance Genotyping in Mexican Patients.

Juan Pablo Rodriguez-Auad,Othon Rojas-Montes,Rosalia Lira,Ma Teresa Alvarez-Muñoz,Onofre Muñoz,Guillermo Vazquez-Rosales,Angelica Maldonado-Rodriguez,Rocio Torres-Ibarra

doi:10.1155/2015/240407

Juan Pablo Rodriguez-Auad, Othon Rojas-Montes + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/240407

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Abstract

Monitoring antiretroviral therapy using measurements of viral load (VL) and the genotyping of resistance mutations is not routinely performed in low- to middle-income countries because of the high costs of the commercial assays that are used. The analysis of dried plasma spot (DPS) samples on filter paper may represent an alternative for resource-limited settings. Therefore, we evaluated the usefulness of analyzing DPS samples to determine VL and identify drug resistance mutations (DRM) in a group of HIV-1 patients. The VL was measured from 22 paired plasma and DPS samples. In these samples, the average VL was 4.7 log10 copies/mL in liquid plasma and 4.1 log10 copies/mL in DPS, with a correlation coefficient of R = 0.83. A 1.1 kb fragment of HIV pol could be amplified in 14/22 (63.6%) of the DPS samples and the same value was amplified in plasma samples. A collection of ten paired DPS and liquid plasma samples was evaluated for the presence of DRM; an excellent correlation was found in the identification of DRM between the paired samples. All HIV-1 pol sequences that were obtained corresponded to HIV subtype B. The analysis of DPS samples offers an attractive alternative for monitoring ARV therapy in resource-limited settings.

Highlights

The prevalence of HIV-1 infection has been increasing all over the world, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)
In high-income countries (HICs), the monitoring of ARV therapy using viral load (VL) and genotypic resistance testing is essential to determining cases of treatment failure [5]; the quantification of VL serves as an indicator for whether ARV therapy leads to success or failure in HIV infected patients [6]
We evaluated the usefulness of analyzing dried plasma spot (DPS) samples to determine viral load (VL) and identify drug resistance mutations in Mexican patients with HIV-1 infection

Summary

Introduction

The prevalence of HIV-1 infection has been increasing all over the world, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Plasma, and serum spots (DBS, DPS, and DSS, resp.) have been successfully used to quantify viral RNA and evaluate genotypic drug resistance [5, 7, 13, 14]; select limitations and challenges continue to inhibit their practical use. These limitations include their lower limits of detection, the instability of nucleic acids in longterm storage, and the interference of proviral DNA. We evaluated the usefulness of analyzing DPS samples to determine viral load (VL) and identify drug resistance mutations in Mexican patients with HIV-1 infection

Materials and Methods

Results

Discussion