[DNA diagnosis of alpha-herpesvirinae infection]

Herpesviruses have a characteristic of the latency after the primary infection. Advanced study on the causal relation between the reactivation of latent virus and the appearance of the symptoms would need both of the detection of viral genome by the DNA diagnosis method and the analysis of the kinetics of the virus. We developed a new quantitative method for the detection and the titration of copy number in the viral genome using the combination of polymerase chain reaction and microplate hybridization. The availability of the method was confirmed by the several cases of alpha-herpesvirinae infections.