Introduction

The polymerase chain reaction（PCR）has been used as a qualitative method to detect human immunodeficiency virus type 1（HIV1）DNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells and plasma（Ou et al，1988；Schnittman et al.，1990；Genesca et al.，1990；Michael et al.，1992）.

Recently the same technique coupled with cDNA synthesis by reverse transcriptase（RT）has been empolyed to amplify HIV1 RNA（Hart et al.，1988；Holodniy et al.，1991a；Michael et al.，1992）.Since HIV1 is a positive-stranded RNA virus，quantitative measurement of plasma HIV1 RNA should directly reflect productive viral replication and HIV disease activtiy（Hart et al.，1988；Holodniy et al.，1991a）.Using a simplified guanidinium-based extraction technique，we have been able to quantitate HIV1 RNA in blood samples.Here we describe a clinical study of HIV1 RNA quantitation in plasma from patients with AIDS and AIDS-related complex（ARC）using the RT-PCR method.(https://www.daowen.com)