Application of commercial cytomegalovirus IgG avidity diagnostic kit

In the absence of acute clinical manifestation, the diagnosis of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is usually done by serology, which has been an important tool in the clinical medicine.

Many commercial CMV IgG avidity kits are available for identification. We decided to evaluate the Autobio Diagnostics Co., Ltd cytomegalovirus IgG avidity diagnostic kit for recent infection by comparing the performances of different CMV IgG avidity diagnostic kits on three commercially available seroconversion panels.

In this study, we described the application of some commercial CMV IgG avidity diagnostic kits in the diagnostics of CMV recent infection. The results of three commercially available seroconversion panels RP-003, RP-019, and PTC901 with a total of 37 samples showed that 99 days after seroconversion, the values of Autobio CMV IgG avidity higher than 50% indicated a high avidity, the high avidity can exclude recent 3 months infection. A total of 130 specimens were tested and compared with the RADIM CMV IgG avidity assay. Seven gray zone results were excluded. The low avidity sample agreement was 100% (22/22), high avidity sample agreement was 95.0% (96/101). The specificity of the Autobio CMV IgG avidity assay was evaluated by testing a total of 744 specimens which were reactive with the Autobio CMV IgG assay and nonreactive with the Autobio CMV IgM assay. Seventeen gray-zone specimens were excluded, the clinical specificity of the Autibio CMV IgG avidity assay was 97.4% (708/727).

We concluded that the Autobio CMV IgG avidity assay is a comparatively reliable tool to identify CMV recent infection according to these performance evaluation data.