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Published on: July 9, 2014
Cytomegalovirus antibody screening on the Olympus PK7100
1Welsh Regional Transfusion Centre, Rhydlafar, Cardiff CF5 6XF, United Kingdom.
Insights
The Olympus PK CMV system (OHA) offers high concordance (99.7%) for cytomegalovirus (CMV) antibody detection in blood donors. This automated system demonstrates excellent sensitivity and specificity, making it suitable for pretransfusion testing.
Area of Science:
- Clinical diagnostics
- Transfusion medicine
- Virology
Background:
- Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a common pathogen requiring reliable detection in blood donations.
- Automated systems enhance efficiency and accuracy in pretransfusion blood testing.
- Evaluating new diagnostic platforms is crucial for transfusion safety.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess the performance of the Olympus PK CMV system (OHA) for detecting cytomegalovirus antibodies.
- To evaluate the OHA's utility on the Olympus PIC7100 automated instrument.
- To compare OHA performance against established CMV testing methods.
Main Methods:
- Evaluation of the Olympus PK CMV system (OHA) on the Olympus PIC7100 automated instrument.
- Parallel testing with CMV Scan latex agglutination test (LAT).
- Comparison with IMx enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and complement fixation test (CFT) as reference standards.
Main Results:
- The OHA showed 99.7% concordance with the CMV Scan LAT.
- Indeterminate results were observed in 1.2% of samples.
- The OHA demonstrated high sensitivity (99.9%) and specificity (100%) compared to IMx ELISA.
Conclusions:
- The Olympus PK CMV system (OHA) is a reliable and accurate method for CMV antibody detection in pretransfusion blood testing.
- Simultaneous CMV testing with blood grouping and antibody screening is feasible on the Olympus PK7100.
- The OHA system is suitable for routine use in blood banking settings.
Abstract:
The Olympus PK CMV system (OHA) for the detection of antibodies to cytomegalovirus (CMV) was evaluated for use on the Olympus PIC7100 automated pretransfusion blood testing instrument. Indeterminate reactions were obtained with 18 (1.2%) of the 1,495 samples originally tested, of which 9,6, and 3 were OHA positive, indeterminate, and negative, respectively, on retest. The OHA was found to have a concordance of 99.7 percent when tested in parallel with the CMV Scan latex agglutination test (LAT). There were four discrepant results in the 1,495 donor plasmas tested by the two methods. Two of the three samples that were positive by the UT and negative by the OHA test were also negative with the IMx enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (EUSA) and complement fixation test (CFT). The OHA failed to detect antibodies to CMV in a sample that was positive by the IMx ELISA, CFT, and LAT. The IMx ELISA, which was regarded as the arbiter of true positivity, yielded a sensitivity and specificity of 99.9 percent and 100 percent respectively, for the Olympus PK CMV system. Forty percent of 1,807 random blood donors in this region bad antibodies to CMV. CMV testing can be performed simultaneously with blood grouping and red cell antibody screening on the Olympus PK7100.

