Viral load monitoring

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection is a global health challenge that requires continuous advancements in diagnostic and prognostic tools. Traditional markers, such as CD4 cell counts and viral load, have played a crucial role in monitoring disease progression and guiding therapeutic interventions. However, emerging research suggests that platelet index ratios may serve as valuable biomarkers in assessing immune health and managing HIV-associated complications. This paper explores the significance of platelet index ratios, including platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio and mean platelet volume-to-lymphocyte ratio, as potential indicators of immune system status in individuals living with HIV...

Severe acute respiratory syndrome-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection in immunocompromised patients presents a challenge, as patients with such conditions may have severe courses. Identifying modalities to shorten the course or lessen the severity of infection could be potentially beneficial. A 76-year-old male with follicular lymphoma on rituximab and lenalidomide presented with COVID-19 pneumonia requiring intensive care unit (ICU) level care for persistent hypoxemia. He was treated with an extended course of remdesivir, as recommended by the Infectious Diseases service, but he maintained a persistently high viral load, necessitating a delay of his cancer treatment until he had recovered from his infection...

OBJECTIVE: :We estimated the effects of cumulative exposure to depressive symptoms on risk of all-cause mortality among people living with HIV in four African countries. DESIGN: :Analysis of prospective cohort data. METHODS: :The African Cohort Study (AFRICOS) is a prospective cohort of people receiving care at twelve clinics in Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda. Every six months from January 2013 to May 2020, participants underwent laboratory monitoring, structured surveys, and assessment of depressive symptom severity using the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D)...

BACKGROUND: While national adoption of universal HIV treatment guidelines has led to improved, timely uptake of antiretroviral therapy (ART), longer-term care outcomes are understudied. There is little data from real-world service delivery settings on patient attrition, viral load (VL) monitoring, and viral suppression (VS) at 24 and 36 months after HIV treatment initiation. METHODS AND FINDINGS: For this retrospective cohort analysis, we used observational data from 25 countries in the International epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) consortium's Asia-Pacific, Central Africa, East Africa, Central/South America, and North America regions for patients who were ART naïve and aged ≥15 years at care enrollment between 24 months before and 12 months after national adoption of universal treatment guidelines, occurring 2012 to 2018...

Generating an infectious non-human primate (NHP) model using a prevalent monkeypox virus (MPXV) strain has emerged as a crucial strategy for assessing the efficacy of vaccines and antiviral drugs against human MPXV infection. Here, we established an animal model by infecting cynomolgus macaques with the prevalent MPXV strain, WIBP-MPXV-001, and simulating its natural routes of infection. A comprehensive analysis and evaluation were conducted on three animals, including monitoring clinical symptoms, collecting hematology data, measuring viral loads, evaluating cellular and humoral immune responses, and examining histopathology...

Naturally occurred precore (PC, G1896A) and/or basal core promoter (BCP, A1762T/G1764A) mutations are prevalent in chronic HBV-infected patients, especially those under HBeAg-negative status. However, the replicative capacity of HBV with PC/BCP mutations remains ambiguous. Herein, meta-analysis showed that, only under HBeAg-negative status, the serum HBV DNA load in patients with PC mutation was 7.41-fold higher than those without the mutation. Both PC mutation alone and BCP+PC mutations promoted HBV replication in cell and hydrodynamic injection mouse models...

BACKGROUND: We analyzed the STREAM (Simplifying HIV TREAtment and Monitoring) study to determine risk factors associated with HIV viraemia and poor retention 18 months after initiation of antiretroviral therapy (ART). METHODS: The STREAM study was an open-label randomized controlled trial in Durban, South Africa, that enrolled 390 people living with HIV presenting for their first HIV viral load measurement ~6 months after ART initiation. We used modified Poisson regression with robust standard errors to describe associations between baseline characteristics and three HIV outcomes 18 months after ART initiation: HIV viraemia (>50 copies/mL), poor retention in HIV care, and a composite outcome of poor retention in care and/or HIV viraemia...

BACKGROUND: To reach the global elimination goals of viral hepatitis B and C (HBC, HCV), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and other sexually transmitted infections as a public health threat by 2030, monitoring is needed. Staff members of drug services and opioid substitution treatment (OST) practices in Berlin and Bavaria recruited clients for a pilot study addressing the respective infections among people who injected drugs (PWID) in Germany, 2021/2022. Participants filled a questionnaire and were tested for HBV, HCV, HIV and syphilis using dried blood spots (DBS)...

Deformed wing virus (DWV) was first detected in dead honey bees in 1982 but has been in honey bees for at least 300 years. Due to its high prevalence and virulence, they have been linked with the ongoing decline in honey bee populations worldwide. A rapid, simple, semi-automated, high-throughput, and cost-effective method of screening colonies for viruses would benefit bee research and the beekeeping industry. Here we describe a semi-automated approach that combines an RNA-grade liquid homogenizer followed by magnetic bead capture for total virus nucleic acid extraction...

Due to their high specific surface area and its characteristic's functionalized nanomaterials have great potential in medical applications specialty, as an anticancer. Herein, functional nanoparticles (NPs) based on iron oxide Fe2 O3 , iron oxide modified with copper oxide Fe2 O3 @CuO, and tungsten oxide WO3 were facile synthesized for biomedical applications. The obtained nanomaterials have nanocrystal sizes of 35.5 nm for Fe2 O3 , 7 nm for Fe2 O3 @CuO, and 25.5 nm for WO3 . In addition to octahedral and square nanoplates for Fe2 O3 , and WO3; respectively...

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the relationship between cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections and donor-derived cell-free DNA (dd-cfDNA) in heart transplant recipients. METHODS: In our study, CMV and dd-cfDNA results were prospectively collected on single-organ heart transplant recipients. If the CMV study was positive, a CMV study with dd-cfDNA was repeated 1-3 months later. The primary aim was to compare dd-cfDNA between patients with positive and negative CMV results...

BACKGROUND: Approximately 30,000 non-citizens are living with HIV in Botswana, all of whom as of 2020 are eligible to receive free antiretroviral treatment (ART) within the country. We assessed the prevalence of HIV-1 mutational profiles [pre-treatment drug resistance (PDR) and acquired drug resistance (ADR)] among treatment-experienced (TE) and treatment-naïve (TN) non-citizens living with HIV in Botswana. METHODS: A total of 152 non-citizens living with HIV were enrolled from a migrant HIV clinic at Independence Surgery, a private practice in Botswana from 2019-2021...

BACKGROUND: The scaling-up of antiretroviral therapy (ART) is the greatest accomplishment to reduce the burden of acquired immunodeficiency syndromes (AIDS) to date. However, it requires optimal adherence to be effective. Thus, this study was designed to assess the level of adherence of people living with HIV (PLWH) to ART and its determinants in one of the hardest-hit areas with HIV in Ethiopia. METHODS: A health facility-based cross-sectional study design was conducted among adult PLWH, age >18 years, and receiving ART in southwest Ethiopia...

In the last few years, many manufacturers have developed new kits for plasma HIV-1 RNA quantification. Recently, a solution consisting of the ELITe InGenius® instrument and the HIV1 ELITe MGB®kit has been commercialized worldwide. Our aim was to compare its clinical performance with the Aptima® HIV-1 Quant Dx kit by Hologic, on a panel of HIV-1 group M circulating variants, representative of viral load levels found during the pre- and post-treatment follow-up of patients. The linearity was evaluated on the AcroMetrix® HIV-1 Panel...

UNLABELLED: Scaling up of newer innovations that address the limitations of the dried blood spot and the logistics of plasma monitoring is needed. We employed a multi-site, cross-sectional assessment of the plasma separation card (PSC) on blood specimens collected from all consenting adults, assenting young and pediatric patients living with HIV from 10 primary healthcare clinics in South Africa. Venous blood for EDTA-plasma samples was collected and analyzed according to the standard of care assay, while collected capillary blood for the PSC samples was analyzed using the Roche COBAS AmpliPrep/Cobas TaqMan (CAP/CTM) HIV-1 Test at the National Reference laboratories...

BACKGROUND: The clinical routine test of HBV-specific T cell reactivity is still limited due to the high polymorphisms of human leukocyte antigens (HLA) in patient cohort and the lack of universal detection kit, thus the clinical implication remains disputed. METHODS: A broad-spectrum peptide library, which consists of 103 functionally validated CD8+ T-cell epitopes spanning overall HBsAg, HBeAg, HBx and HBpol proteins and fits to the HLA polymorphisms of Chinese and Northeast Asian populations, was grouped into eight peptide pools and was used to establish an ELISpot assay for enumerating the reactive HBV-specific T cells in PBMCs...

A PCR- and sequencing-free mutation detection assay facilitates cancer diagnosis and reduces over-reliance on specialized equipment. This benefit was highlighted during the pandemic when high demand for viral nucleic acid testing often sidelined mutation analysis. This shift led to substantial challenges for patients on targeted therapy in tracking mutations. Here, we report a 30-minute DNA mutation detection technique using Cas12a-loaded liposomes in a microplate reader, a fundamental laboratory tool. CRISPR-Cas12a complex and fluorescence-quenching (FQ) probes are introduced into tumor-derived extracellular vesicles (EV) through membrane fusion...

Understanding viral infection dynamics in wildlife hosts can help forecast zoonotic pathogen spillover and human disease risk. Bats are particularly important reservoirs of zoonotic viruses, including some of major public health concern such as Nipah virus, Hendra virus, and SARS-related coronaviruses. Previous work has suggested that metapopulation dynamics, seasonal reproductive patterns, and other bat life history characteristics might explain temporal variation in spillover of bat-associated viruses into people...

Snakehead vesiculovirus (SHVV) is one of the primary pathogens responsible for viral diseases in the snakehead fish. A TaqMan-based real-time PCR assay was established for the rapid detection and quantification of SHVV in this study. Specific primers and fluorescent probes were designed for phosphoprotein (P) gene, and after optimizing the reaction conditions, the results indicated that the detection limit of this method could reach 37.1 copies, representing a 100-fold increase in detection sensitivity compared to RT-PCR...

This study examined the viral shedding kinetics of elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV) in African elephants ( Loxodonta africana ) compared to viral shedding behavior in Asian elephants ( Elephas maximus ). Little is known about the transmission dynamics and epidemiology of this disease in African elephants. In light of recent clinical cases and mortalities, this paper aims to identify trends in viral biology. Trunk wash samples were collected from 22 African elephants from four North American zoological institutions that had recently experienced herd viremias or translocations...