Glucometer Used by Diabetics for Economical HIV Viral Loading Testing in Resource Limited Settings

Pratap Mukhopadhyaya from Wobble Base Bioresearch Pvt. Ltd. in India will develop a glucometer to detect HIV RNA. The existing major methodologies for viral load quantitation require sophisticated infrastructure and reagents that generate high priced tests (>50 USD per test) that are often not feasible for use in resource limited settings. The new assay involves making an HIV cDNA-DNA-invertase complex, which is added to sucrose solution to generate glucose through hydrolysis by the invertase enzyme that is detected using the glucometer. The amount of glucose detected is a function of HIV copy number.