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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Oct 1.
Published in final edited form as: AIDS. 2009 Oct 23;23(16):2151–2158. doi: 10.1097/QAD.0b013e3283313ca9

Table 2.

Assays performed, costs and result turnaround time.

Algorithm
thresholds (HIV
RNA copies/ml)		 Assays for
100 samples
(average)		 Negative predictive value at HIV RNA
copies/ml		 Cost per samplea
(average in $)		 Turnaround time
for all results
(average days)
>500 (%) >250 (%) >100 (%) >50 (%)
Individual testing NA 100 100 100 100 100 75 5
Minipool 250 59 100 98 93 88 45 7
500 44 100 94 88 82 33 5
Matrix 500 44 100 97 90 86 33 17b
1500 30 100 95 89 83 23 9b

Costs are in US dollars. NA, not applicable.

a

Only accounting for cost of assay performed at commercial laboratory, not additional costs to constitute the matrix or minipool.

b

Although the matrix pooling platform required an average of 17 and 9 days to resolve all samples below the threshold, ≥66% of all individual samples with viral loads more than 50 HIV RNA copies/ml were resolved in the first day.