Analysis Strategies for Pooled Nucleic Acid Testing to Identify Antiretroviral Treatment Failure During HIV Infection

• Activity Number: 282
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 3, 2010 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: ENAR
• Author(s): Susanne May*+ and Tanya Granston and Davey Smith
• Companies: University of Washington and University of Washington and University of California, San Diego
• Keywords: efficiency ; matrix ; AIDS

Abstract

Pooling strategies have been used to reduce the costs of polymerase chain reaction based screening for acute HIV infection in populations with low prevalence (< 1%). Only limited research has been done for higher prevalences (>1%). We present a variety of pooling and analysis strategies that incorporate the use quantitative measures to monitor for virologic failure among HIV-infected patients receiving antiretroviral therapy. We compare the results of the different pooling and analysis strategies with respect to the number of assays performed. The presented pooling and analysis strategies may be used to significantly reduce the cost compared to individual testing. They may also be used to design efficient pooling and analysis strategies for other settings with quantitative screening measures.