OBJECTIVE Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 blood plasma viral load is correlated with the sexual transmission of HIV, although transmission from men involves virus from semen instead of blood. We quantified HIV-1 RNA in the blood and semen of men who did or did not transmit HIV to their sex partners. We compared the relationships of HIV-1 transmission risk with blood plasma viral load, semin...

BACKGROUND Although chronic infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) has been established as a cause of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the roles of viral load and HBV genotype remain unclear. METHODS From 1988 through 1992, baseline blood samples were collected from 4841 Taiwanese men who were HBV carriers but had not been diagnosed with HCC. We used real-time polymerase chain reaction assays ...

Factors associated with undetectable viral load (<80 copies/ml) were investigated among non-pregnant adults in antiretroviral treatment in a specialized service for HIV/AIDS in Southern Brazil. Use of antiretrovirals was investigated in two interviews (one month interval). Clinical data were collected from the clinical records; viral load previous to adherence measurement was defined the viral ...

BACKGROUND The sieve analysis for the Step trial found evidence that breakthrough HIV-1 sequences for MRKAd5/HIV-1 Gag/Pol/Nef vaccine recipients were more divergent from the vaccine insert than placebo sequences in regions with predicted epitopes. We linked the viral sequence data with immune response and acute viral load data to explore mechanisms for and consequences of the observed sieve ef...

Trends in HIV virulence have been monitored since the start of the AIDS pandemic, as studying HIV virulence informs our understanding of HIV epidemiology and pathogenesis. Here, we model changes in HIV virulence as a strictly evolutionary process, using set point viral load (SPVL) as a proxy, to make inferences about empirical SPVL trends from longitudinal HIV cohorts. We develop an agent-based...

Dengue is a vector-borne viral disease of humans that endemically circulates in many tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. Infection with dengue can result in a range of disease outcomes. A considerable amount of research has sought to improve our understanding of this variation in disease outcomes and to identify predictors of severe disease. Contributing to this research, patterns of vi...

OBJECTIVE To investigate if viral load, integration and methylation of E2BS3 and 4 represent different ways of tumor transformation in vaginal and vulvar carcinoma and to elucidate its clinical impact. METHODS Fifty-seven samples, positive for HPV16, were selected for the study. Detection of viral load was made with realtime-PCR using copy numbers of E6 and integration was calculated from com...

Antiretroviral therapy prevents human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)– related complications by suppressing viral replication [1]. To forestall virologic rebound and treatment failure, a regimen must reduce the plasma HIV-1 RNA to a threshold below which the virus does not evolve and develop drug resistance. Although this threshold has not been precisely defined, it is probably near the l...

We are entering into a new era for treatment of HIV because of the development of the new class of drugs called protease inhibitors and secondly because of the development of the new technology called viral load testing. On June 3, the FDA granted approval to Roche Diagnostics for their viral load test, AMPLICOR HIV-1 MONITOR test, more commonly known as RT-PCR, viral load or HIV RNA PCR. It is...

Background The three dimensional model of HIV/AIDS is the basis of active research since it includes most aspects regarding the interaction of HIV with patient’s immune system. This model is parameterized by six parameters namely the death rate of CD4 cells, rate of infection of CD4 cells by virus, death rate of CD8 cells, rate of increase of CD8 cells in response to increased viral load, rate ...