Widely used virus assay shown unreliable when compared to other methods
Wednesday, October 21, 2009 - 23:28
in Health & Medicine
Blacksburg, Va. -- In the course of doing research on the mosquito-borne pathogens chikungunya virus (CHIKV) and o' nyong-nyong virus (ONNV), Virginia Tech researchers have discovered an inconvenient truth about an assay, strand-specific quantitative real-time PCR (ssqPCR), increasingly being used to detect and measure replicating viral RNA in infected cells and tissues.