Guidelines for the qualitative detection of viral genomes in dried blood spots.

Dried blood spots (DBSs) are a useful alternative to blood sampling especially in children or for screening high-risk populations in developing countries. DBS blood collection can be employed in the diagnosis of viral infections by PCR or RT-PCR and also in viral genome sequencing. In addition, the advent of multiplex PCR approaches has led to further diagnostic and methodological improvements allowing simultaneous detection of two or more different viral genomes in the same sample and amplification reaction. This chapter describes general guidelines for the qualitative viral genome amplification and detection in DBS providing an example application of a qualitative real-time SYBR Green-based multiplex RT-PCR assay targeting two major viral pathogens, HIV-1 and HCV.