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Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, February 2006, p. 214-218, Vol. 13, No. 2
1071-412X/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/CVI.13.2.214-218.2006
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Performance of a Time-Resolved Fluorescence Immunoassay for Measuring Varicella-Zoster Virus Immunoglobulin G Levels in Adults and Comparison with Commercial Enzyme Immunoassays and Merck Glycoprotein Enzyme Immunoassay

P. A. C. Maple,1* J. Gray,1 J. Breuer,3 G. Kafatos,2 S. Parker,3 and D. Brown1

Virus Reference Department, Centre for Infections, Health Protection Agency, 61 Colindale Avenue, London NW9 5HT,1 Statistics Unit, Centre for Infections, Health Protection Agency, 61 Colindale Avenue, London NW9 5EQ,2 Skin Virology, Centre for Infectious Disease, Institute of Cell and Molecular Science, Queen Mary University of London, Whitechapel, London E1 1BB, United Kingdom3

Received 2 August 2005/ Returned for modification 29 September 2005/ Accepted 15 November 2005

Highly sensitive and specific, quantitative assays are needed to detect varicella-zoster virus (VZV) immunoglobulin G in human sera, particularly for determining immune status and response following vaccination. A time-resolved fluorescence immunoassay (TRFIA) has been developed, and its performance was compared to that of two commercial enzyme immunoassays (EIAs) and Merck glycoprotein EIA (gpEIA). The TRFIA had equivalent sensitivity (97.8%) and high specificity (93.5%) in relation to gpEIA. A commercial (Behring) EIA compared favorably with TRFIA in terms of sensitivity (98.4%) but had lower specificity (80.7%). Another commercial EIA (Diamedix) had high specificity (97.1%) but low sensitivity (76.4%) compared to TRFIA if equivocal test results were treated as negative for VZV antibody. A novel feature of the TRFIA was that the cutoff was generated using population mixture modeling and was expressed in mIU/ml, as the assay was calibrated using the British standard VZV antibody.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Virus Reference Department, Health Protection Agency Centre for Infections, Colindale, London NW9 5HT, United Kingdom. Phone: 44 020 8200 4400. Fax: 44 020 8205 8195. E-mail: chris.maple{at}hpa.org.uk.

Clinical and Vaccine Immunology, February 2006, p. 214-218, Vol. 13, No. 2
1071-412X/06/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/CVI.13.2.214-218.2006
Copyright © 2006, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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