Abstract:
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a the pandemic disease in the world and the most
serious public health problem in developing countries. It is an RNA virus known as a retrovirus
which has two major strains. HIV-1 causes the majority of the infections worldwide and is more
easily transmitted than the other strain HIV-2. HIV-2 is restricted to West Africa. The aim of this
study is comparing the viral load test measurement between plasma and serum sample among
human immunodeficiency virus type 1 positive patient using COBAS Ampliprep/COBAS TaqMan
v2.0 CAP real time Polymerase Chain Reaction at University of Gondar comprehensive
specialized Hospital. Cross-sectional study was carried out from February 2020 to May 2020 at
University of Gondar comprehensive specialized Hospital ART laboratory. Non randomized
purposive sampling techniques used to select 73 study participants. Data were, entered in to EPI
info version7 and export to SPSS version 20 for analysis. Four milliliter of venous blood were
collected by ethylene demine tetra acetic acid anti-coagulant contain test tube for plasma
determination and also four milliliter of venous blood was collected by none anti-coagulant
serum test tube for serum viral load quantification. Viral load status of study participant was
determined by COBAS Ampliprep/COBAS TaqMan v2.0CAp Real time -polymerize chain
reaction from both serum and plasma samples. Viral load determination were performed on
plasma and serum samples by using paired t-test in comparison of their means and standard
deviations. The mean difference ± standard deviation (0.534±1020.798) with r 0.996 and p-value
0.996). The correlation between plasma and serum viral load was high. There was no significant
difference on the mean of serum and plasma blood sample. Therefore, there is a need of new
implementation to use serum blood specimen for determination of viral load in HIV-1
seropositive patients. This is particularly interesting to resource-limited countries.
