The prognostic significance of human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA and E6/E7 mRNA, the presence of specific types, and the physical state of HPV DNA, were studied in 202 cervical squamous cell carcinomas. Absence or non-detectable levels of high-risk (types 16, 18, 31, 33, 35, 45, 52 and 58) E6/E7 mRNA, using the real-time nucleic acid sequence based amplification (NASBA) assay, and absence of HPV h...

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has been suggested to play a role in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, reports on detailed EBV transcript analyses in HCCs are limited. It was shown recently that expression of the transforming BARF1 (BamHI A rightward open reading frame 1) gene of EBV is restricted to latently EBV-infected epithelial malignancies, i.e. nasopharyngeal carcinoma and gastric carcin...

The TRUGENE HIV-1 Genotyping Kit and OpenGene DNA Sequencing System are designed to sequence the protease (PR)- and reverse transcriptase (RT)-coding regions of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) pol. Studies were undertaken to determine the accuracy of this assay system in detecting resistance-associated mutations and to determine the effects of RNA extraction methods, anticoagulants,...

Dengue fever is considered the most important arthropod-borne viral diseases in terms of morbidity and mortality. An accurate and efficient diagnosis of dengue plays an important role in case confirmation. The virus may be isolated during the viremic phase (within day 5 of illness), from serum, plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Enzyme linked immunoassay (ELISA) has demonstrated the...

We comment on the problems faced by Niscola et al1 during a specific diagnosis of leishmaniasis in patients with hematological malignancies. Rather than a serological test like direct agglutination and anti-K39 antibody, an in-vitro culture, and/or polymerase chain reaction (PCR) might be required to establish leishmaniasis diagnosis in those with a concurrent HIV infection. Serology would gene...

BACKGROUND Plasma HIV RNA levels reflect systemic viral replication but in CNS it may occur relatively independent of systemic infection, yet clinical application of CSF HIV-1 RNA levels is less clear. OBJECTIVE To compare CSF and plasma HIV-1 RNA levels of patients with different opportunistic neurological diseases to those without neurological disease, as well as to correlate these levels w...

In 2000, we monitored the course and persistence of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in 54 women who were HPV positive and free of any cytological disease using HPV-DNA genotyping with a linear array assay (baseline). The impact of HPV infection on development of cervical cytological abnormality (dyskaryosis) was monitored by repeat HPV genotyping and cytological assessment 2 years later. D...

Seminal viral load is likely to be directly related to the sexual transmissibility of human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). However, it is not clear whether the level of HIV-1 in semen varies with the stage of infection and whether antiretroviral therapy reduces seminal viral load. A nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) technique was used to quantify HIV-1 RNA as an indicato...