Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (Aug 2008)

Performance of indirect immunofluorescence assay, immunochromatography assay and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction for detecting human respiratory syncytial virus in nasopharyngeal aspirate samples

  • LRA Vaz-de-Lima,
  • MCO Souza,
  • TK Matsumoto,
  • MA Hong,
  • MM Salgado,
  • ML Barbosa,
  • NS Sato,
  • HI Requejo,
  • CAF Oliveira,
  • R Pecchini,
  • E Berezin,
  • SD Passos,
  • C Schvartsman,
  • A Pasmanick,
  • EL Durigon,
  • M Ueda

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1590/S0074-02762008000500009
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 103, no. 5
pp. 463 – 467

Abstract

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Comparison of the use of indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA), immunochromatography assay (ICA-BD) and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for detecting human respiratory syncytial virus (HRSV) in 306 nasopharyngeal aspirates samples (NPA) was performed in order to assess their analytical performance. By comparing the results obtained using ICA-BD with those using IFA, we found relative indices of 85.0% for sensitivity and 91.2% for specificity, and the positive (PPV) and negative (NPV) predictive values were 85.0% and 91.2%, respectively. The relative indices for sensitivity and specificity as well as the PPV and NPV for RT-PCR were 98.0%, 89.0%, 84.0% and 99.0%, respectively, when compared to the results of IFA. In addition, comparison of the results of ICA-BD and those of RT-PCR yielded relative indices of 79.5% for sensitivity and 95.4% for specificity, as well as PPV and NPV of 92.9% and 86.0%, respectively. Although RT-PCR has shown the best performance, the substantial agreement between the ICA-BD and IFA results suggests that ICA-BD, also in addition to being a rapid and facile assay, could be suitable as an alternative diagnostic screening for HRSV infection in children.

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