Efficient quantification of HIV-1 in heparin plasma spiked with cultured HIV-1 by the Roche Cobas TaqMan and Abbott RealTime HIV-1 tests.

The current automated real-time HIV-1 viral load assays, the Roche Cobas AmpliPrep/Cobas TaqMan test and the Abbott RealTime test, are FDA cleared for use with EDTA plasma. We show that both real-time reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) tests reliably quantify HIV-1 RNA in heparin plasma specimens spiked with HIV-1 isolate MN.