the ability to monitor the progression of human immunodeficiency virus infection in patients is paramount to the study of hiv transmission , in predicting the onset and advancement of disease , and evaluating the clinical efficacy of therapeutics . present methods available to the clinician for the study of hiv pathogenesis employ surrogate markers . surrogate markers are biological indicators that tend to reflect , to varying extent , the gradual progression of the asymptomatic state to the development of acquired immune deficiency syndrome . the most commonly used markers are cd4 + lymphocyte counts and hiv p24 antigen production . the use of markers to evaluate disease progression suffers from a number of limitations . no known marker consistently reflects disease progression in all patients and stages of disease . moreover , an effective marker must rapidly reflect the changes associated with antiviral therapy . accordingly , there still exists in the field a need for a rapid and direct technique for assessing the viral load of an hiv - infected patient . the present invention discloses a rapid method for qualitatively determining the number of hiv - 1 - infected patient cells in a sample . patient cells are subjected to direct stimulation with reactive oxygen intermediate generator , in the absence of co - culture with donor cells , and the quantity of p24 antigen produced from said stimulation ascertained . these values are compared to those values obtained from hiv - 1 chronically infected cell lines of known proviral copy number and the number of infected patient cells determined . this method provides a facile , rapid , and direct method for the assessment of viral load .