RESEARCH ARTICLE The BD FACSPresto Point of Care CD4 Test Accurately Enumerates CD4+

Objective Currently 50 % of ART eligible patients are not yet receiving life-saving antiretroviral therapy (ART). Financial constraints do not allow most developing countries to adopt a universal test and offer ART strategy. Decentralizing CD4+ T cell testing may, therefore, provide greater access to testing, ART, and better patient management. We evaluated the technical performance of a new point-of-care CD4+ T cell technology, the BD FACSPresto, in a field methods comparison study. Methods 264 HIV-positive patients were consecutively enrolled and included in the study. The BD FACSPresto POC CD4+ T cell technology was placed in two rural health care facilities and operated by health care facility staff. We compared paired finger-prick and venous samples using the BD FACSPresto and several existing reference technologies, respectively. Results The BD FACSPresto had a mean bias of 67.29 cells/ul and an r2 of 0.9203 compared to th