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Journal of Clinical Microbiology, Jan 1995, 205-208, Vol 33, No. 1
Copyright © 1995 by the American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Low human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) DNA burden as a major cause for failure to detect HIV-1 DNA in clinical specimens by PCR

M Zazzi, L Romano, M Catucci, A De Milito, P Almi, A Gonnelli, M Rubino and PE Valensin
Department of Molecular Biology, University of Siena, Italy.

To determine the sensitivity of a nested PCR procedure for detecting human immunodeficiency virus type 1 DNA in clinical specimens, 553 peripheral blood mononuclear cell samples obtained from 268 human immunodeficiency virus type 1-seropositive subjects were assayed by use of two independent primer sets for each sample. Overall, 1,088 of 1,106 (98.37%) reactions were positive. Investigation of the negative reactions showed that a low viral burden in some infected subjects, rather than primer-template mismatches, was the primary cause for the false-negative PCR results.