Comparative evaluation of the performance of the Abbott RealTime HIV-1 assay for measurement of HIV-1 plasma viral load on genetically diverse samples from Greece.

Background: HIV-1 is characterized by increased genetic heterogeneity which tends to hinder the reliability of detection and accuracy of HIV-1 RNA quantitation assays.

Methods: In this study, the Abbott RealTime HIV-1 (Abbott RealTime) assay was compared to the Roche Cobas TaqMan HIV-1 (Cobas TaqMan) and the Siemens Versant HIV-1 RNA 3.0 (bDNA 3.