Use of a Liposomal Internal Control Vehicle for Whole-Process Quality Assurance of Nucleic Acid Amplication

IC Particles with Increased Density ...........................................................................30 2.4 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................. 31 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................................ 31 References ........................................................................................................................................ 32

When performing any scientic examination, a negative result is considered to be unreliable unless the chances of obtaining a false-negative result have been eliminated from the experimental system. It is important to minimize the likelihood of false-negative results since they lower the overall sensitivity, as well as the negative predictive value, of an analysis.1 In a diagnostic setting, falsenegative results may lead to inadequate treatment of the patients,2,3 whereas in a public health setting, the surveillance and control of the spread of infectious disease becomes less efcient.4 The principal sources of false-negative results in nucleic acid amplication assays are inhibition, human and technical operational errors, and nuclease degradation of the sample nucleic acid, especially RNA targets.