Use of Dried Blood Spot to Improve the Diagnosis and Management of HIV in Resource-Limited Settings

Copyright © 2013 Chatté Adawaye et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Over 75 % of people infected with HIV live in countries where health resources are very limited for the diagnosis and biological monitoring of people infected by the virus. In resource-limited settings, the use of DBS is a valuable alterna-tive. It has provided technical and economical alternative to the collection of blood in the tubes for testing HIV infec-tion. The DBS can be kept for over a year, it is economical in storage space and facilitates storage conditions because it can be stored at room temperature. It is more discreet and easier to carry over liquid samples that require tubes and other appropriate materials. The amount is sufficient for certain analyses of DNA generally, but may be insufficient for the analysis of viral RNA if the viral load is low. Its disadvantage is often associated with small amounts of blood col-lected available for testing, and the difficulties encountered in laboratories to extract the maximum possibilities without material contamination. DBS can be stored at room temperature (25˚C- 35˚C), at 4˚C, −20˚C or even −70˚C. With PCR, the DBS is a suitable medium for the diagnosis of patients infected with HIV, virological monitoring by the VL an