Plasma viral load: situation is fluid During on

Plasma viral load: situation is fluid

During one of the Cytodyn conference calls Patterson explained that the viral RNA he detected in blood plasma may not have been from live virus, hence he was hesitant to describe his result as viremia. During that call, which was at least two or three weeks ago, Patterson emphasized that he sent samples to a lab at UC San Francisco which could make a determination as to whether the virus was live or not.

This article, posted earlier today,

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/art...5/fulltext

also emphasizes that the RNA which they detected may not have been from live virus.

I think the idea is that viral RNA can exist in the blood in at least two forms. First, live viruses could be present in the blood. Second, viral RNA fragments released could be released into the bloodstream by apoptosis of infected cells.

I suspect that the science of viral RNA in the bloodstream is still evolving. In Patterson's personal communcations posted earlier today, Patterson emphasized that he did not include the 14 day viremia data in the already-published preprint because he was in a rush. He had only just developed the super-sensitive ddPCR covid RNA assay. Probably other labs are scrambling to assay viral RNA in blood, both live virus and other.