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Flow cytometric indirect immunofluorescence assay with high sensitivity and specificity for the detection of antibodies to HSV-1 and HSV-2

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Abstract

Cells infected with HSV-1 or HSV-2 develop viral antigens which can be detected by immunofluorescence. We developed a flow cytometric indirect immunofluorescence assay to detect and quantitate antibodies to HSV-1 and HSV-2 in human sera. Results obtained by flow cytometry for detecting antibodies against HSV-1, when compared with results obtained by ELISA, showed an index of overall agreement of 100%. The correlation between the antibody titers obtained with each method was found to be highly significant. An index of overall agreement equal to 94.1% was observed between results obtained by flow cytometry and by immunofluorescence as concerns the discrimination of HSV-2 positive from negative samples. However, the correlation between antibody titers was found to be not statistically significant. The flow cytometric assay proved to be type-specific.

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Caruso, A., Tinti, M., Peroni, L. et al. Flow cytometric indirect immunofluorescence assay with high sensitivity and specificity for the detection of antibodies to HSV-1 and HSV-2. Eur J Epidemiol 9, 547–552 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00209534

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