TABLE I.
Comparison of Three NAT Assays for the Quantitation of HCV RNA in Chimpanzee-Derived Plasma Pools of the Six Major Genotypes and of Selected Subtypes
| Genotype | Virus strain | log10 chimpanzee infectious doses/mla | log10 IU/ml of HCV (N, SD)
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HCV Monitor 2.0 | HCV b-DNA 3.0 | HCV TaqMan | |||
| 1a | H77C | 3.5 | 4.8 (2, 0.04) | 4.6 (2, 0.00) | 4.4 (2, 0.07) |
| 1a | HC-TN | 5 | 5.3 (2, 0.05) | 5.0 (2, 0.01) | 4.7 (2, 0.06) |
| 1b | HC-J4 | 3 | 4.7 (3, 0.05) | 4.4 (2, 0.00) | 4.4 (4, 0.12) |
| 2a | HC-J6 | 4 | 5.0 (3, 0.07) | 4.5 (2, 0.02) | 4.7 (4, 0.10) |
| 2b | HC-J8 | 4 | 4.6 (2, 0.13) | 4.0 (3, 0.04) | 4.0 (4, 0.42) |
| 3a | S52 | 3 | 4.3 (3, 0.02) | 3.8 (2, 0.00) | 4.0 (4, 0.49) |
| 4a | ED43 | 5 | 5.6 (3, 0.05) | 5.6 (2, 0.04) | 5.4 (4, 0.30) |
| 5a | SA13 | 4 | 5.1 (2, 0.00) | 4.8 (2, 0.01) | 4.4 (4, 0.57) |
| 6a | HK-6a | 3 | 4.9 (2, 0.05) | 4.5 (2, 0.00) | 4.2 (3, 0.41) |
Plasma pools were evaluated in two or more independent tests by the HCV Monitor 2.0, the Versant HCV RNA 3.0 b-DNA and our in-house HCV TaqMan assays and yielded results that were not significantly different (P = 0.069) based on analysis of variance. The plasma pools, representing the six major genotypes of HCV, all yielded values that were within the linear testing ranges of all three assays.
a
Except for HCV strain H77C, titers were obtained by reverse titration in single chimpanzees and are therefore approximate.