When you can't depend on the assays you use to evaluate an HIV treatment, you're going to cause avoidable suffering.

One of the primary methods used to evaluate the effectiveness of anti-retroviral medication against HIV infection is viral load testing.  Viral load testing can provide confirmation a treatment is working, and (equally, if not more important) the first sign that a treatment is becoming ineffective. In regions with little infrastructure, and poorly equipped facilities, the viral load testing can be inaccurate.  That’s the finding of the group Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors Without Borders).  They investigated a facility in sub-Saharan Africa.  Although inspection showed the facility adhered to good lab practice in separating reagent preparation and sample analysis, and access to good water, and acceptable laboratory freezers, there were still a large number of false test results.

For further information visit www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.

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