View clinical trials related to Dried Blood Spot.
Filter by:In Vietnam, the prevalence of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is estimated between 0.4% and 5%, which is much higher than the prevalence in Europe or in the USA. After HCV diagnosis, HCV viral load quantification is crucial in order to distinguish recovered from active (on-going) HCV infection and hence identify those who need antiviral treatment to cure HCV infection. HCV viral load quantification is also important to assess treatment efficacy. Currently, anti-HCV antibodies detection is available around the country. However, access to confirmation of HCV viremia remains scarce particularly in decentralized areas. One of the reason is the limited number of laboratories able to perform this complex biological measurement; moreover, these laboratories are situated only in large urban centres. Blood sampling using DBS could help overcome this difficulty of access to a laboratory, and widen access to HCV viral load monitoring. The present MOVIDA Hep study aims at validating the use of DBS to measure HCV viral load as compared to plasma (gold standard). A secondary objective is to evaluate the measurement of HCV core antigen on DBS. For this, 315 patients need to be enrolled form outpatient clinics in Hanoi. The laboratory in charge of these measurements would be the virology laboratory of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology (NIHE) in Hanoi (Vietnam).
As of today, HIV-infected patients followed in decentralized area have little or even no access to viral load monitoring because laboratories able to perform this biological measurement are only in large cities, and because plasma transfer to these laboratories is complex and very costly. Blood sampling using dried blood spots (DBS) could overcome these difficulties. The goal of this operational research is to document the feasibility of DBS use in decentralised area to monitor viral load, to evaluate the virological response on ART, and to compare the virological response between injecting drug users (IDU) and the other patients, as IDU represent a large proportion of HIV-infected patients who may have a lower access/adherence to care.