Performance of a line immunoassay based upon recombinant Epstein-Barr virus antigens for diagnosis of primary EBV infection

Abstract

Herpesviruses are the group of DNA viruses causing infection in human. Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is one of the eight human herpesviruses which was discovered around fifty years ago. It is given to understand that approximately 90% of worldwide adult population has been infected with EBV before the age thirty. EBV is also associated with a wide variety of disease such as infectious mononucleosis (IM), Burkitt’s lymphoma (BL) and nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC). Diagnosis of EBV infection is routinely managed by clinical laboratories, particularly to diagnose infectious IM. Traditional diagnostic methods to detect EBV include antigen detection by IFA and ELISA. These methods are very labor intensive and time consuming. It also needs professional staff to handle the result interpretation. In recent years, some of the EBV proteins were defined as being immunodominant for either IgG, IgM or IgA immune responses and promising markers for the diagnostic serology. A commercial kit, EBV MIKROGEN assay for detection of IgG, IgM and IgA for diagnosis of primary EBV infection was evaluated and compared with serology results performed by clinical laboratory, Queen Mary Hospital. Result shows that the sensitivity of EBV MIKROGEN IgM and IgG and IgA assay were 65.63% and 39.39% and 42.42% respectively. The specificity of EBV MIKROGEN IgM, IgG and IgA assay were 85.37%, 100% and 92.5% respectively. The PPV of EBV MIKROGEN IgM, IgG and IgA assay were 77.78%, 100% and 82.35% respectively. The NPV of EBV MIKROGEN IgM, IgG and IgA assay were 76.09% and 60.61% and 66.07% respectively. In conclusion, the overall performance of EBV MIKROGEN IgM, IgG and IgA assay was comparable with antigen detection by IFA and ELISA. Moreover, the EBV MIKROGEN assay can also detect the specific antigen markers for EBV primary infection. (2)