Jordi Nuibo, a research fellow in the Clinical Virology Department at the University of Minnesota, has recently published an article in the Journal of Clinical Microbiology entitled Recovery and Analysis of Human Immunodeficiency Virus Type 1 (HIV) RNA Sequences from Plasma Samples with Low HIV RNA Levels. Extraction of HIV RNA is a critical step in the amplification and subsequent sequence analyses of HIV, and doing so with plasma from patients with low HIV RNA levels has shown to be quite challenging. In the study, two commercial kits used for the extraction of HIV RNA from plasma samples were compared for their usefulness. The NucliSens RNA extraction kit proved to be the best method for obtaining HIV RNA for genotypic studies from plasma fractions of individuals with low HIV RNA levels; sequences were amplified in 20 of 44 samples containing approximately 600 copies/ml of HIV RNA as measured by the Chiron version 3.0 bDNA assay.
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