101. Short Communication: The 2005 Italian Quality Control Study for the Evaluation of CD4 Cells in Centers Involved in the Treatment of HIV Type 1 Patients
- Author
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Federico Martini, Crysoula Vlassi, Alessia Vitale, Enrico Girardi, Fernando Aiuti, Gianpiero D'Offizi, Bianca Mollicone, and Eleonora Cimini
- Subjects
Reproducibility ,medicine.medical_specialty ,Cd4 t cell ,business.industry ,Immunology ,Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) ,medicine.disease_cause ,medicine.disease ,Infectious Diseases ,Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) ,Absolute count ,Virology ,Internal medicine ,medicine ,Hiv patients ,Viral disease ,business - Abstract
We report the results of an external quality control program, including 17 Italian centers involved in the care of patients infected by HIV, to evaluate CD4 T cell count proficiency and reproducibility. The centers received two commercial stabilized blood preparations, one with “normal” and one with “low” CD4 T cell content. The centers were asked to process the samples two times, 1 week apart, with the same procedure used for samples from HIV patients. Most centers showed a good performance of CD4 frequency and absolute count determinations. In particular, the “low” sample was correctly analyzed by all centers; only two underestimated the “normal” sample CD4 frequency, and only one underestimated the CD4 absolute count by >100 CD4 cells/μl. Overall, our data suggest that most Italian laboratories provide reliable and reproducible results in evaluating CD4 T cells in HIV+ samples.
- Published
- 2007