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Volume 40, Issue 2, Pages 129-134 (October 2007)


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Detection and differentiation of wild-type and vaccine mutant varicella-zoster viruses using an Invader Plus® method

Yi-Wei TangabCorresponding Author Informationemail address, Hatim T. Allawic, Marlene DeLeon-Carnesd, Haijing Lia, Stephen P. Dayc, D. Scott Schmidd

Received 16 March 2007; received in revised form 13 July 2007; accepted 18 July 2007. published online 29 August 2007.

Abstract 

We report the use of a prototype Invader Plus® method (Third Wave Technologies, Inc., Madison, WI) for the qualitative detection of varicella-zoster virus (VZV) and differentiation of wild-type and Oka vaccine VZV. The analytical sensitivity of the VZV Invader Plus reagents is at 10 copies per reaction. A total of 174 skin and mucous swab specimens were used to validate the assay's performance. The sensitivity and specificity were 98.3% and 98.1%, respectively, in comparison to a PCR-EIA assay. A perfect 100% agreement was obtained when VZV wild-type and vaccine differentiation was performed on 54 VZV-positive swab specimens against an allele-specific FRET real-time assay. The Invader Plus method provides another reliable tool for qualitative detection of VZV and differentiation of wild-type and vaccine virus.

a Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN 37232, United States

b Department of Pathology, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN 37232, United States

c Third Wave Technologies, Inc., Madison, WI 53719, United States

d National Center for Immunizations and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA 30333, United States

Corresponding Author InformationCorresponding author at: Molecular Infectious Diseases Laboratory, 4605 TVC, Vanderbilt University Hospital, Tennessee 37232-5310, United States. Tel.: +1 615 322 2035; fax: +1 615 343 8420.

 The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the funding agencies.

PII: S1386-6532(07)00256-9

doi:10.1016/j.jcv.2007.07.007


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