Test, test, test everything.
HIV RNA was determined by branched DNA quantification (Bayer bDNA test, Versant HIV-1 RNA 3.0 assay [bDNA], Bayer Health Care).
Plasma HIV-1 RNA levels were determined by a second-generation assay based on nucleic acid sequence based amplification (NASBA), for samples collected until 2001 and by the branched-chain DNA assay (Versant HIV RNA test, Version 3.0, lower limit of quantification 50 copies/ ml; Bayer Diagnostics, Milan, Italy) from 2001 until 2008.
Three commercial VL assays were tested: Versant HIV-1 RNA 1.0 kPCR (Siemens), Abbott Realtime HIV-1, and Cobas Ampliprep/Cobas Taqman HIV-1 v2.0 (Roche).
Furthermore, two negative control samples testing negative with the Versant™ HCV assay, also tested negative with the microarray test.
The test, called Versant, can detect the amount of all major types of human immunodeficiency virus in the blood and can help in monitoring the disease and measuring the effectiveness of any therapy, Bayer said.
The Versant HCV RNA 1.0 test (Siemens Healthcare) is a real-time PCR assay that uses a magnetic silica bead-based automated RNA extraction followed by automated amplification of the HCV genome and detection on the Versant Kinetic PCR (kPCR) Molecular System platform.
The assays tested were Versant HIV-1 RNA 1.0 kPCR (Siemens, performed at UCLouvain, using 0.5mL of plasma), Realtime HIV-1 (Abbott, performed at Erasme using the 0.6mL plasma volume protocol), and Cobas Ampliprep/Cobas Taqman HIV-1 v2.0 (CAP/CTM, Roche Diagnostics, perfomed at UZ Brussel, using 0.85mL of plasma).
Only samples previously tested with the Versant™ HCV assay were available for microarray testing.
