Comparison of serum and plasma viral load measurements in human immunodeficiency virus type 1 infection

Abstract

The diagnosis of human immunodeficiency virus 1 (HIV) infections is reliant on viral nucleic acid testing (NAT). HIV viral load (VL) is generally measured in plasma samples.

We evaluated and compared plasma HIV VL results with those obtained using serum samples, the aim being to enable the use of serum in urgent contexts where plasma is not available. Our findings indicated a very high correlation between the HIV VL results obtained in plasma and in serum.