[The rapid diagnosis of rubella and measles by the dot immunoassay method]

A procedure is described for the routine laboratory identification of IgM or/and IgG antibodies to measles and rubella simultaneously. A rapid dot-immunobinding assay on nitrocellulose was compared with ELISA systems. 58 serum samples from patients with an exanthematous disease and 15 serum negative samples for both virus were studied. The type of antibody found in all samples was variable and was always related to the presence of immunity in each individual. However, all known negative samples were negative. When results were compared with commercially available ELISA systems or reference laboratories, we found an excellent correlationship including titers. We concluded that the dot-immunobinding assay is a rapid, specific, sensitive, reproducible and economic test that can be used simultaneously for identification of several antigens.