6th International AIDS Conference San Francisco, California, USA — June 20-23, 1990

Int Conf AIDS 1990 Jun 20-23; 6:319 (abstract no. 1020)
Ottmann M, Innocenti P, Baccard C, Morand P, Pelloquin F, Seigneurin JM; Laboratoire de Virologie, Faculte de medecine, Grenoble, France

OBJECTIVE: To study the viremia in human sera or plasma and attempt to correlate it with the different stages of HIV-1 infection.

METHODS: Sera or plasma were ultracentrifuged, then reverse transcription and amplification were performed in an aliquot of the concentrated pellet. LTR, GAG and ENV regions of the cDNA synthesized from the genomic HIV-1 RNA were amplified with SK29/SK30, SK38/SK39 and SK68/SK69 primers pairs. Amplified products were analysed by southern blot with corresponding 32P-labelled probes.

RESULTS: Sera or plasma of HIV seronegative, asymptomatic seropositive individuals, and AZT-treated patients were screened for the presence of genomic RNA. No HIV DNA was detected in these samples using PCR without reverse transcription. Specific HIV amplified sequences relative to genomic HIV RNA were detected in 13 out of 14 AZT-treated patients, in 21 out of 21 asymptomatic subjects, and in none of 12 seronegative individuals.

CONCLUSION: In our series, HIV was present in the cell-free plasma of all asymptomatic untreated individuals, as well as in most treated patients. Thus, the method used appears to be a marker for blood infectivity and for disease progression.

900620
1020

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