Improving HIV Diagnosis at Birth to Increase Early ART Initiation

Diagnosing HIV infection at birth and immediately initiating antiretroviral therapy could reduce the infectious HIV reservoir in CD4 cells, potentially contributing to functional cure. Early diagnosis is therefore important, but the sensitivity of standard diagnostic testing for HIV DNA in newborns is highly variable, and false negatives are common when HIV DNA concentrations are low. Might increasing DNA input from dried blood spots (DBS) into polymerase chain reaction (PCR) improve detection of HIV infection at birth among infants with low concentrations of viral DNA?

To answer this question, researchers conducted HIV DNA testing on DBS specimens collected at birth, 2, 4, and 8 weeks of life from 849 HIV-exposed infants in Mozambique. HIV …