Polymerase chain reaction kinetics when using a positive internal control target to quantitatively detect cytomegalovirus target sequences.

High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) was used to detect and quantify cytomegalovirus (CMV) specific polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products generated during PCR co-amplification. PCR of CMV AD 169 or a plasmid which contains the CMV AD 169 native target sequence using the CMV primer set of Hsia et al. (J. Clin. Microbiol. 27, 1802-1809) generates a 152 bp PCR product. A CMV control sequence plasmid which shared the primer sequence of native CMV AD 169 but when amplified produces a larger 362 bp product was constructed. Under co-amplification conditions there was a linear relationship (over 3 logs) between the molar ratio of input CMV native and control target sequence and the molar ratio of the output PCR products as detected by HPLC despite differences between the two PCR target and product sizes. Co-amplifying known amounts of CMV control sequence plasmid as an internal standard allowed accurate quantitation of the amount of CMV native target sequence in a sample when the two PCR targets were present in approximately equimolar amounts +/- 1.5 log (coefficient of variation (CV) < 12%). By modifying the amount of CMV control target sequence plasmid used for co-amplification, accurate detection of the amount of CMV native sequence in samples could be extended to 5 logs, standard error (S.E.) < or = 16%. Precise quantitation of PCR targets using co-amplification PCR requires multiple sample dilutions to ensure that the CMV native target sequence was in a close equimolar relationship with the CMV control sequence at the time of PCR amplification.