An inexpensive and manual method of CD4 T-cell quantitation in India

[Guest guest]

An inexpensive, simple, and manual method of CD4 T-cell quantitation

in HIV-infected individuals for use in developing countries.

Author: Balakrishnan P; Dunne M; Kumarasamy N; Crowe S; Subbulakshmi G

Source: JAIDS. Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes. 2004

Aug 15; 36(5): 1006-1010.

Abstract: CD4/+ T lymphocytes are currently the most common surrogate

marker indicating immune status and disease progression with HIV

infection. The cost of monitoring disease progression and response to

therapy is still prohibitively expensive. Flow cytometry is the gold

standard for the estimation of CD4+, but the high initial investment

for this technology and expensive reagents makes it unaffordable for

developing countries like India.

We evaluated the Coulter cytosphere assay for quantifying CD4/+ T

lymphocytes in comparison with the standard method, flow cytometry, in

122 HIV-infected individuals. The correlation coefficient of the

cytosphere assay compared with that of flow cytometry for CD4/+ T

lymphocytes was 0.97 (P< 0.0001), with a confidence interval of 0.95

to 0.98. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and

negative predictive value of the cytosphere assay in enumerating

absolute CD4/+ T-lymphocyte counts of less than 200/µL were 94.9%,

96.4%, 92.5%, and 97.6%, respectively.

This is a simple inexpensive method and has a strong correlation with

flow cytometry. Hence, the cytosphere assay can be an alternate to

flow cytometry for the estimation of CD4/+ Tlymphocyte counts,

especially in resource-poor settings of developing countries, for

monitoring HIV progression and response to therapy.