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Clinical and Diagnostic Laboratory Immunology, Mar 1994, 186-188, Vol 1, No. 2
Copyright © 1994 by the American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.

Comparison of three commercially available assays for detection of varicella-zoster virus antibody

TB Martins, TD Jaskowski, C Schroder, B Streeter and HR Hill
Department of Pathology, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City 84108, USA.

Three commercially available diagnostic assays for the detection of antibodies to varicella-zoster virus were evaluated to determine which would be the most suitable for our clinical laboratory. Three different methods were examined: an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), latex agglutination (LA), and an indirect fluorescent-antibody technique. For the 141 serum specimens tested, the ELISA had an agreement of 90.1% and LA had an agreement of 92.2% with the indirect immunofluorescent-antibody technique. The ELISA had a lower sensitivity (85.6%) than LA (100.0%), but suffered from a low specificity (78.4%) compared with the ELISA (98.0%).