Skip to main content

Application of Real Time loop mediated isothermal amplification (RT LAMP) as a point of care assay using dried blood spots for rapid detection of HIV infection

Background

Early and rapid diagnosis of HIV is essential to reduce the transmission and to start Anti Retroviral Therapy. The increasingly sophisticated molecular methods for diagnosing acute HIV infection have a direct impact on patient management as they have been developed to overcome the limitations of serological assays. Development of a further methodology, which is technologically simple and equally sensitive, accessible and affordable, is essential to detect the very few copies of viral genome during acute HIV infection. Hence in the present study a Real Time Loop Mediated Isothermal Amplification (RT LAMP) assay on Dried Blood Spots (DBS) for the detection of HIV RNA was developed for an early and specific diagnosis of HIV.

Methods

To evaluate HIV RT LAMP in comparison with real time PCR, 600 DBS samples from high risk groups (300 truck drivers and 300 Men who have sex with men) and 100 healthy and age matched individuals (control group) were included in the study. Informed consent was obtained from all the patients and controls.

Results

The performance characteristics of the HIV RT LAMP in comparison with Real Time PCRs were 100% sensitive and specific with a % CV less than 10.

Conclusion

The HIV RT LAMP on DBS, developed in this study, proved to be a highly sensitive, accurate, simple and affordable assay and easy to be performed in any small laboratory, especially in developing countries with a potential of a point of care assay, costing approximately 5 times lesser than the sophisticated molecular methods.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lakshmi Vemu.

Rights and permissions

Open Access  This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Vanjari, L., Vemu, L., Dandona, L. et al. Application of Real Time loop mediated isothermal amplification (RT LAMP) as a point of care assay using dried blood spots for rapid detection of HIV infection. BMC Infect Dis 14 (Suppl 3), O11 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-14-S3-O11

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2334-14-S3-O11

Keywords