A RECOMBINANT PROTEIN-BASED ENZYME-IMMUNOASSAY FOR IGM ANTIBODY TO HUMAN CYTOMEGALOVIRUS

The reliability of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) which used recombinant antigen to detect human cytomegalovirus IgM was studi ed. Serum samples from each of 283 children aged 5 +/- 2 years were st udied. In all samples the anti-IgM antibodies were investigated with t he ELISA techniques Enzygnost (Behring) and ETI-Cito (Sorin) which wer e both based on whole viral particles, and OPUS (Behring) based on rec ombinant antigen. Of the samples, 254 (89.4%) were negative with all t hree tests. The 29 remaining samples were positive with one or two of the three techniques. The diagnostic efficacy of Enzygnost, ETI-Cito a nd OPUS, respectively, was for sensitivity of 50%, 66.7% and 50%, and for specificity of 100%, 95.6% and 96%, respectively. The results with each of the three ELISAs did not differ widely and their diagnostic e fficacy was similar. The method based on recombinant antigen was not f ound to be more effective than tests based on whole viral particles.