CINECA IRIS Institutional Research Information System

IRIS è la soluzione IT che facilita la raccolta e la gestione dei dati relativi alle attività e ai prodotti della ricerca. Fornisce a ricercatori, amministratori e valutatori gli strumenti per monitorare i risultati della ricerca, aumentarne la visibilità e allocare in modo efficace le risorse disponibili.

Testing HIV-1 RNA in plasma by PCR is universally accepted as the ultimate standard to confirm diagnosis of HIV-1 infection and to monitor viral load in patients under treatment. However, in some cases, this assay could either underestimate or overestimate the replication capacity of a circulating or latent virus. In the present study, we performed the assessment of evaluating the HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT) activity by means of a new assay for the functional screening of the status of HIV-1 patients. To this purpose, we utilized, for the first time on blood samples, an adapted version of a real-time RT quantitative PCR assay, utilized to evaluate the HIV-1-RT inhibitory activity of compounds. The study analyzed blood samples from 28 HIV-1-infected patients, exhibiting a wide range of viremia and immunological values. Results demonstrated that plasma HIV-1 RT levels, expressed as cycle threshold values obtained with the assay under appraisal, were inversely and highly significantly correlated with the plasma HIV-1-RNA levels of the patients. Thus, an HIV-1 RT quantitative PCR assay was created which we describe in this study, and it may be considered as a promising basis for an additional tool capable of furnishing information on the functional virological status of HIV-1-infected patients.

Macchi, B., Frezza, C., Marino-Merlo, F., Minutolo, A., Stefanizzi, V., Balestrieri, E., et al. (2020). Appraisal of a Simple and Effective RT-qPCR Assay for Evaluating the Reverse Transcriptase Activity in Blood Samples from HIV-1 Patients. PATHOGENS, 9(12), 1-9 [10.3390/pathogens9121047].

Powered by IRIS-about IRIS-Utilizzo dei cookie

 Copyright © 2022