Serological diagnosis of Epstein-Barr virus infection by novel ELISAs based on recombinant capsid antigens p23 and p18
✍ Scribed by Inge Färber; Walter Hinderer; Markus Rothe; Dieter Lang; Hans H. Sonneborn; Peter Wutzler
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2001
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 98 KB
- Volume
- 63
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0146-6615
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
A new pair of Epstein-Barr virus ELISAs (Biotest Anti-EBV VCA IgG and VCA IgM ELISA) was evaluated for usefulness for routine diagnosis of acute EBV infections. The ELISAs are based on two viral capsid antigens (VCA), p23 (BLRF2, fulllength) and p18 (BFRF3, carboxy-half), that are combined by autologous gene fusion. In total, 179 sera were tested in direct comparison with classical VCA immuno¯uorescence assays (IFA). With the help of clinical data and additional reference serology, i.e., heterophile antibodies, anti-EA IgG (IFA) and anti-EBNA-1 IgG (ELISA), the patients were divided into the following categories: seronegatives (46), acute primary infections (67), previous infections (39), suspected reactivations (20) and constellations with intermediate serological patterns (7). The VCA IgG and VCA IgM ELISAs showed overall agreement to IFA of 95.0% and 94.4%, respectively. The calculated analytical performance (sensitivity; speci®city) of VCA IgG and VCA IgM was 94.0%; 97.8% and 97.1%; 96.5%, respectively. A certain delay in seroconversion of anti-p23-p18 IgG may account for a signi®cant difference in sensitivity of the VCA IgG ELISA between primary (88.4%) and previous infections (100%). In summary, the new recombinant VCA ELISAs yielded good correlation to VCA IFA and in combination with EBNA-1 IgG allow rapid, sensitive, and speci®c diagnosis of infectious mononucleosis or EBV immune status in general.