Comparing the viral load test measurement between Plasma and Serum sample among HIV 1 positive patient under ART at University of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Referral Hospital

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.