Abstract
CMV antibody status may be an important factor in antenatal counselling and screening blood products and transplant donors. Though CMV strains are known to have heterogeneous antigens, most clinical laboratories use only a single antigen for CMV serology. The limitations of a single antigen in CMV serology were investigated.
Cord sera and antepartum maternal sera from 3 congenitally CMV-infected infants were CMV-seronegative (liter < 8) on complement fixation (CF) assay using a commercial glycine-extracted (GE) AD169 antigen. When their own CMV isolates were propagated and made into GE-CF antigen, all became seropositive (cord titers 64, 64, 256; maternal titers 16, 32, 32). When 108 random cord sera were assayed for CF antibody using antigens AD169, Davis, and TC (a locally-derived antigen from one of the above infants), 44 were seropositive and 54 seronegative with all 3 antigens. Of the remaining 10 sera, 4 were positive with TC only, 3 with TC and Davis, 2 with Davis and AD169, and 1 with AD169 only. All 10 were positive when a mixture of all 3 antigens was used. No anticomplementary activity was detectable in any of these sera. A commercial CMV-indirect hemagglutination antibody assay that uses AD169 antigen was posilive with only 4 of these 10 sera.
Antigenic heterogeneity among CMV strains may cause up to 7% of sera to be misclassified as seronegative if only a single antigen is used in the CF assay.
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Faix, R. 1091 CYTOMEGALOVIRUS (CMV) ANTIGENIC HETEROGENEITY MAY CAUSE FALSE NEGATIVE RESULTS IN ANTIBODY ASSAYS. Pediatr Res 19, 292 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-198504000-01121
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1203/00006450-198504000-01121