[Amplification of specific cytomegalovirus DNA sequences using the polymerase chain reaction]

Highly sensitive and specific laboratory methods are essential for an early diagnosis of Cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections. Neither method of tissue culture nor CMV serology methods can serve for that purpose but they are useful for the postsymptomatic diagnostics. During the infection, CMV stays in body fluids and the appearance of clinical signs is strictly correlated to viremia. Early detection is of a great therapeutical importance. It is achieved by sensitive and specific Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, which proved extremely efficient and not time consuming. We used specific nested CMV-DNA-PCR (gB target) method for the analysis of 46 plasma specimens in order to determine a presence of highly conservative nucleotide sequences of gB CMV-gene. There were 17 positive samples. Our results showed that this method is useful for early detection of CMV-DNA in presymptomatic diagnosis of seronegative CMV infected patients.