A qualitative PCR minipool strategy to screen for virologic failure and antiretroviral drug resistance in South African patients on first-line antiretroviral therapy

Date
2014-08
Authors
Newman, Howard
Breunig, Lukas
Van Zyl, Gert
Stich, August
Preiser, Wolfgang
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Elsevier
Abstract
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Background: The high cost of commercial HIV-1 viral load tests for monitoring of patients on antiretroviral treatment limits their use in resource-constrained settings. Commercial genotypic antiretroviral resistance testing is even more costly, yet it provides important benefits. Objectives: We sought to determine the sensitivity and negative predictive value of a qualitative PCR targeting partial reverse transcriptase for detection of virologic failure when 5 patient specimens are pooled. Study Design: A total of 300 South African routine patient samples were included and tested in 60 pools of 5 samples each. A qualitative nested PCR was optimised for testing pools and individual samples from positive pools. All positive samples were sequenced to detect drug resistance-associated mutations. Results were compared to those of conventional viral load monitoring. Results: Twenty-two of 60 pools tested positive. Individual testing yielded 29 positive individual samples. Twenty-six patients had viral loads of above 1000 copies per millilitre. The pooling algorithm detected 24 of those 26 patients, resulting in a negative predictive value of 99.3%, and a positive predictive value of 89.7%. The sensitivity for detecting patients failing therapy was 92%, with a specificity of 98.9%. Of the patients failing first-line ART, 83.3% had NRTI and 91.7% NNRTI resistance mutations. Conclusions: The pooled testing algorithm presented here required 43% fewer assays than conventional viral load testing. In addition to offering a potential cost saving over individual viral load testing, it also provided drug resistance information which is not available routinely in resourced-limited settings.
Description
Please cite as follows: Newman, N. et al. 2014. A qualitative PCR minipool strategy to screen for virologic failure and antiretroviral drug resistance in South African patients on first-line antiretroviral therapy. Journal of Clinical Virology, 60(4):387-391, doi:/10.1016/j.jcv.2014.05.011.
The original publication is available at http://www.journalofclinicalvirology.com/article/S1386-6532%2814%2900188-7/pdf
Thesis (MMed)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.
Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License 4.0 CC BY-NC-ND
Keywords
Specimen pooling, Antiretroviral agents, HIV (Viruses) -- Treatment, Drug resistance, HIV monitoring
Citation
Newman, N. et al. 2014. A qualitative PCR minipool strategy to screen for virologic failure and antiretroviral drug resistance in South African patients on first-line antiretroviral therapy. Journal of Clinical Virology, 60(4):387-391, doi:/10.1016/j.jcv.2014.05.011.