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 ant iviral therapy. Today, commercial assays based on reverse transcription-pol ymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), the branched DNA (bDNA) technology and on nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) are available. Clinical r elevance of those assays is limited because of relatively poor reproducibil ity, 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. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.