Abstract

Mother-to-child transmission leads to death of 50% of infected children in the first 2 years of life. Early diagnosis is essential for timely treatment. Dried blood spots (DBS) collected on filter paper provide a simple approach for sample collection especially in resource limited settings, because storage and shipment are very easy. The aim of the study was to standardize reproducible, affordable and not expensive deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) extraction procedures. 146 samples were collected in the context of DREAM Program activity (Drug Resources Enhancement against AIDS and Malnutrition), a large public health programme in Africa to treat AIDS, and nine experimental methods were compared with the HIV-DNA extraction from whole blood using Amplicor HIV-1 DNA Roche Molecular Systems. The results obtained demonstrates that it is possible to extract DNA form DBS using a Chelex resin based method with comparable efficiency to that of a commercial standardized kit, as Qiagen, decreasing test costs by about 50% and with an excellent correlation with whole blood extraction.

Keys words: Early infant diagnosis, human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1), dried blood spots (DBS), extraction.