Practical application of diagnostic virus serology

A number of virologists have suggested that current methods of virus serology are impractical and should be discontinued. An evaluation of the results in our laboratory showed positive confirmation in 1,571 of 6,599 suspected clinical cases or 23.6% including hundreds of cases which were still in the hospital or under the care of the physician. Further analysis of these 1,571 cases revealed that 75.9% had antibody titers in the acute specimen. These results suggest that optimal utilization is not being made of information currently available and that a practical service can be provided locally in most cases with existing techniques simply by more frequent sampling and testing of the patients' sera.