COMPARATIVE-EVALUATION OF 3 RECOMBINANT ANTIGEN-BASED ENZYME IMMUNOASSAYS FOR DETECTION OF IGM AND IGG ANTIBODIES TO HUMAN PARVOVIRUS B19

Background: Diagnosis of acute and past infection with parvovirus B19 is based on detection of IgM and IgG antibodies. Objectives: To evalua te two commercial recombinant antigen-based enzyme immunoassay (EIA) t est kits for detection of IgM and IgG antibodies to parvovirus B19 and to compare the commercial EIAs to in-house EIA test procedures. Study design: A panel of 121 sera was used to compare the three IgM EIAs. T he panel included 84 sera submitted for parvovirus B19 testing and 37 sera that were IgM positive for other viral pathogens. The same serum panel plus an additional 14 sera submitted for B19 testing was used to compare the three IgG EIAs. The commercial EIAs were performed accord ing to manufacturers' instructions. Using the in-house EIA test proced ures as the reference, sensitivity and specificity for each of the com mercial EIAs was determined. Results: The commercial B19 IgM EIAs show ed agreements of 95.0 and 93.4% to the in-house IgM EIA. Compared to t he in-house B19 IgM EIA, the commercial B19 IgM EIAs were 97.4 and 97. 5% sensitive, respectively. Specificities were 93.5 and 91.4%, respect ively. Sensitivities for the commercial IgG EIAs, compared to in-house IgG EIA, were 88.0 and 85.2%, respectively, and specificities were 94 .1 and 98.0%. Conclusion: We found that the commercial parvovirus B19 IgM and IgG EIAs are comparable to standard in-house EIAs and are suit able for testing for B19 antibodies in human sera. (C) 1998 Elsevier S cience B.V.