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. 2013 Feb 6;28(1):24–35. doi: 10.1007/s12250-013-3290-0

Detection of the pandemic H1N1/2009 influenza A virus by a highly sensitive quantitative real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction assay

Zhu Yang 1,2,3, Guoliang Mao 1,2,3, Yujun Liu 1,4,5, Yuan-Chuan Chen 6, Chengjing Liu 2,3, Jun Luo 4, Xihan Li 1,2,3, Ke Zen 1, Yanjun Pang 1,2,3, Jianguo Wu 4, Fenyong Liu 6,✉
PMCID: PMC8208345  PMID: 23385352

Abstract

A quantitative real time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) assay with specific primers recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) has been widely used successfully for detection and monitoring of the pandemic H1N1/2009 influenza A virus. In this study, we report the design and characterization of a novel set of primers to be used in a qRT-PCR assay for detecting the pandemic H1N1/2009 virus. The newly designed primers target three regions that are highly conserved among the hemagglutinin (HA) genes of the pandemic H1N1/2009 viruses and are different from those targeted by the WHO-recommended primers. The qRT-PCR assays with the newly designed primers are highly specific, and as specific as the WHO-recommended primers for detecting pandemic H1N1/2009 viruses and other influenza viruses including influenza B viruses and influenza A viruses of human, swine, and raccoon dog origin. Furthermore, the qRT-PCR assays with the newly designed primers appeared to be at least 10-fold more sensitive than those with the WHO-recommended primers as the detection limits of the assays with our primers and the WHO-recommended primers were 2.5 and 25 copies of target RNA per reaction, respectively. When tested with 83 clinical samples, 32 were detected to be positive using the qRT-PCR assays with our designed primers, while only 25 were positive by the assays with the WHO-recommended primers. These results suggest that the qRT-PCR system with the newly designed primers represent a highly sensitive assay for diagnosis of the pandemic H1N1/2009 virus infection.

Keywords: Quantitative real time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR), Influenza A virus, Detection

Footnotes

Foundation items: This research has been supported by grants from National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2011CB504800), National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31100128 and 81030031), National Mega Project on Major Drug Development (2009ZX09103-678), National Small Business Innovation and Research (SBIR) Program of China, the Technology R & D Program of Jiangsu Province, China (BG20077035 and BG2008662), and NIH (RO1-AI041927, RO1-AI050468, RO1-DE014145, and RO1-DE014842).

These authors contributed equally to this work.

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