{"doi":"10.1128/jcm.01400-20","title":"Replicate Aptima Assay for Quantifying Residual Plasma Viremia in Individuals on Antiretroviral Therapy","abstract":"Detection of residual plasma viremia in antiretroviral therapy (ART)-suppressed HIV-infected individuals is critical for characterizing the latent reservoir and evaluating the impact of cure interventions. Ultracentrifugation-based single-copy assays are sensitive but labor intensive. Fully automated replicate testing using a standard clinical viral load assay was evaluated as a high-throughput alternative for the quantification of low-level viremia. Four plasma samples from blood donors with acute HIV-1 infection and one viral culture supernatant were serially diluted into 25-ml samples to nominal viral loads ranging from 39 to <0.5 copies (cp)/ml. Each dilution was tested with 45 replicates (reps) using 0.5 ml/rep with the Aptima HIV-1 Quant assay. The nominal and estimated viral loads based on the single-hit Poisson model were compared, and a hybrid Poisson digital model for calibrated viral load estimation was derived. Testing performed using 45 reps on longitudinal plasma samples from 50 ART-suppressed individuals in the Reservoir Assay Validation and Evaluation Network (RAVEN) study cohort (range of 1 to 19 years of continuous ART suppression) showed a median viral load of 0.54 cp/ml (interquartile range [IQR], 0.22 to 1.46 cp/ml) and a 14% (95% confidence interval [CI], 9% to 19%) decline in viral load for each additional year in duration suppressed. Within the RAVEN cohort, the expected false-negative rate for detection at lower rep numbers using 9 and 18 reps was 26% and 14%, respectively. Residual plasma viremia levels positively correlated with cell-associated HIV RNA and DNA. The performance characteristics of the replicate Aptima assay support its use for quantifying residual plasma viremia to study the latent HIV reservoir and cure interventions.","journal":"Journal of Clinical Microbiology","year":2020,"id":72188,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":16,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9582,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":370429,"name":"Xutao Deng","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":239681,"name":"Peter Bacchetti","orcid":"0000-0002-9323-2972","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":380882,"name":"Eduard Grebe","orcid":"0000-0001-7046-7245","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":382135,"name":"Leilani Montalvo","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":382136,"name":"Andrew Worlock","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":246884,"name":"Mars Stone","orcid":"0000-0001-5619-2767","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":71691,"name":"Steven G. Deeks","orcid":"0000-0001-6371-747X","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":58755,"name":"Douglas D. Richman","orcid":"0000-0003-0962-9254","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":36841,"name":"Michael P. Busch","orcid":"0000-0002-1446-125X","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":324937,"name":"Sonia Bakkour","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":29,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T21:44:45.622639Z","pmid":"32967900","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}