[Laboratory diagnosis of parvovirus B 19 infection: comparison of ten commercial IgG- and IgM-antibody tests].

Abstract

Seven ELISAs, two westernblots and one immunofluorescence assay for serological detection of parvovirus-B19-infection were compared with regard to their sensitivity and specificity. All ten assays are commercially available and use recombinant proteins (VP1, VP2) from bacterial and eukaryotic expression systems and synthetic viral peptides as antigens. The ELISA assays comprise indirect ELISA and mu-capture systems. All assays were tested for their sensitivity with follow-up sera from 21 patients with acute parvovirus B19 infections. The specificity was analysed by 194 sera from pregnant women and from patients with acute other virus infections or rheumatoid factors, but without acute parvovirus infection. Only three ELISAs, both westernblots and the immunofluorescence assay can be recommended for the IgG-measuring (prevalence). For the detection of an acute parvovirus infection, especially during pregnancy, two ELISAs show good IgG- and IgM-results, one ELISA is less recommendable and all other assays show only a poor IgM-specificity.