HIV Working Group

Michael Hudgens, Ph.D
Professor, Department of Biostatistics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill / Director, Biostatistics Core, UNC Center for AIDS Research (CFAR)

“Counting Viruses: Estimating the Size of the Latent HIV Reservoir”

ABSTRACT: We will discuss statistical methods for quantifying the latent HIV reservoir in anti-retroviral therapy (ART) suppressed individuals. In particular, we will focus on the quantitative virus outgrowth assay (QVOA), a type of serial limiting dilution assay which is used to estimate the number of infectious units per million (IUPM) resting CD4+ T cells. A simple, free publicly available R software package and web tool to analyze serial limiting dilution assay data will be described. We will also consider methods for quantifying the size of the reservoir when additional viral RNA sequence data is available.