Evaluation of a new commercial Kit for examining HHV-8 shedding and subtypes in saliva. David J. Speicher1,2, Johnson NW2 1School of Dentistry & Oral Health Griffith University, Southport, Queensland 2Griffith Health Institute, Southport, Queensland Objective: Saliva is a proven diagnostic fluid for the qualitative detection of infectious agents but its ability to determine viral loads accurately is unknown. Stabilising fluids do impede RNA and DNA degradation over the traditional collection and storage methods, but are not perfect. DNA?Genotek's OMNIgene镄ISCOVER has been designed to collect and stabilise microbial DNA from oral samples. This study evaluates the DNA?Genotek P-021 prototype kit (P-021) for the collection and long-term storage of HHV-8 in whole mouth fluid (WMF) at room temperature with the quantitative capability compared against other collection and processing methods. Methods: The P-021 was evaluated by spiking HHV-8 negative WMF with cell-associated and cell-free HHV-8 and determining viral loads, percent loss, DNA quantity and purity, and the best DNA extraction method. These kits were compared against frozen WMF in a field trial in Kenya on HIV-positive patients for viral detection and DNA degradation after 14 months of storage. The quantitative capabilities were determined by spiking WMF with a mixture of HHV-8 cloned constructs, producing 10-fold serial dilutions, extracting the samples and then examining with quantitative PCR. The calibration curves produced were compared by linear regression and qPCR dynamics. Results: Viral loads remained relatively constant for six to nine months, and yielded high quantities of pure DNA. After 14 months, DNA degradation was significant in frozen WMF but P-021 had DNA integrity similar to a freshly collected sample. Ethanol precipitation of the P-021 does not produce a linear standard curve and virus is lost in the pellet of cellular debris during extraction. When DNA extractions were performed on the P-021 with commercial spin columns a linear standard curve with a huge dynamic range and limit of detection better than the other methods was produced. Conclusion: The P-021 is ideal for the collection and storage of HHV-8 in resource poor settings, yielding high quality DNA even after 14 months of storage at room temperature and when extracted with spin columns the P-021 can accurately quantitate viral loads down to 23 copies/uL. Combining its quantitative and long-term storage capability makes it ideal for the detection of HHV-8 in resource poor settings.