The gold standard test, called RT-PCR, can produce a close estimate of the actual viral load, but it is not a direct measurement. They published the work in ACS Nano.Īccording to the corresponding author Weihua Guan, associate professor of electrical engineering and biomedical engineering in the Penn State College of Engineering, the digital assay is the first step in providing a clinical diagnostic tool for a bevy of infectious diseases.Ĭonventional tests for HIV viral load involve taking genetic material from the sample, amplifying it and comparing it to reference samples. Now, a Penn State research team has developed a time and cost-efficient digital assay that can directly measure the presence of HIV in single drop of blood. The time-consuming viral load testing needs to be repeated several times as a patient undergoes treatment. Called the viral load, this is what is measured to allow clinicians to understand how patients are responding to anti-viral medications and monitor potential progression. For a person with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), each drop of blood could contain anywhere from fewer than 20 copies of the virus to more than 500,000 copies. A milliliter of blood contains about 15 individual drops.
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