Infectivity and dynamics of HIV type 1 replication in the blood and reproductive tract of HIV type 1-infected women.

This article delineates several parameters that can influence compartmentalized virus shedding in relation to organ-specific factors and cofactors in the blood and reproductive tract compartments of women infected with the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). Because a wide variety of techniques is currently used for the collection, processing, and quantitation of HIV load in the female genital secretions, standard protocols for appropriate sampling and testing of these specimens are provided. Studies conducted in our laboratory have shown that the levels of cell-free HIV-1 RNA in the female reproductive tract and the blood plasma within HIV-1-infected women are different and therefore may represent independent events.