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Journal of Clinical Microbiology logoLink to Journal of Clinical Microbiology
. 1997 Jan;35(1):98–101. doi: 10.1128/jcm.35.1.98-101.1997

New, ultrasensitive enzyme immunoassay for detecting vaccine- and disease-induced hepatitis A virus-specific immunoglobulin G in saliva.

J J Ochnio 1, D W Scheifele 1, M Ho 1, L A Mitchell 1
PMCID: PMC229518  PMID: 8968887

Abstract

Although detection of disease-induced hepatitis A virus (HAV)-specific antibodies in saliva has been successfully utilized in a few epidemiological studies, available assays fail to detect lower salivary anti-HAV levels associated with vaccine-induced immunity. We present a new capture enzyme immunoassay which employs a three-layer antibody recognition system. Evaluation of paired saliva-serum specimens from 1,025 international travellers, 134 other volunteers, and 91 hepatitis A vaccine recipients demonstrated 99.6% (95% confidence interval, 98.4 to 99.9) specificity and 98.7% (95% confidence interval, 97.7 to 99.4) sensitivity of this salivary assay in differentiating between immune and susceptible individuals, compared with serum-based methods. We conclude that this assay is sufficiently sensitive for reliable detection of both vaccine- and infection-induced HAV-specific immunoglobulin G in saliva, even when corresponding anti-HAV levels in serum are very low (< 1 IU/ml).

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Selected References

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