Compatibility of Stabilized Whole Blood Products with CD4 Technologies and Their Suitability for Quality Assessment Programs

摘要

BackgroundCD4 T cell enumeration is the most widely used prognostic marker for management of HIV disease. Internal quality control and external quality assessment (EQA) programs are critical to ensure reliability of clinical measurements. The utility of stabilized whole blood products (SWBP) as a test reagent for EQA programs such as Quality Assessment and Standardization for Immunological measures relevant to HIV/AIDS (QASI) program have been demonstrated previously. Since then, several new commercial SWBPs and alternative CD4 enumeration technologies have become available. Seven SWBPs were evaluated on seven different enumeration platforms to determine which product(s) are most suitable for EQA programs that support multiple analytical technologies.