Why is viral load important for resistance testing?
Viral load can have an effect on the ease with which a good representation of the patient’s virus population can be amplified. Amplification is one of the first steps in our assay and getting a representative amplified population is vital to good test results. Lower viral load samples (<1000 for Trofile copies) are less likely to be able to be amplified. Or, if we are able to amplify the viral RNA, the amplified product may not be representative of the true viral population of the patient.
Viral load can have an effect on the ease with which a good representation of the patients virus population can be amplified. Amplification is one of the first steps in our assay and getting a representative amplified population is vital to good test results. Lower viral load samples (<1000 for Trofile copies) are less likely to be able to be amplified. Or, if we are able to amplify the viral RNA, the amplified product may not be representative of the true viral population of the patient. See the enclosed discussion on viral loads in Section 2 for more on this topic.
