CMV Brite™ Kit

Introduction
CMV infection in a healthy human is usually subclinical. However, in the immuno-compromised host and a developing foetus it may result in either a localized or disseminated disease. Clinical manifestations of CMV disease include pneumonia, retinitis, hepatitis, enteritis and neurological disease. Despite improved treatment modalities, CMV infection may result in significant morbidity and mortality. Patients are at risk from both primary CMV infection and reactivation of latent infection.

The CMV pp65 antigenemia assay is a valuable tool in the diagnosis and monitoring of active CMV infection in solid organ and bone marrow transplant patients as well as in the diagnosis and monitoring of CMV disease in AIDS patients. Early and rapid diagnosis of active CMV infection is of great importance in avoiding over-treatment with immunosuppressive drugs and in guiding antiviral therapy.

The standard in CMV testing, antigenemia, is a non-culture technique that detects an active infection with blood sample analysis and is optimized for use in the CMV Brite™ Kit and CMV Brite™ Turbo Kit.

The CMV Brite™ antigenemia kit uses the well defined C10/C11 antibody cocktail to detect the CMV lower matrix phosphoprotein (pp65), an early antigen in virus replication, which is abundantly present in antigen-positive polymorphonuclear cells.

Principle of the CMV Brite™ Kit
The CMV antigenemia assay has been developed using a cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies (C10/C11) directed against CMV lower matrix protein pp65. The assay uses the C10/C11 cocktail in an indirect immunofluorescence staining of cytospin preparations of peripheral blood leukocytes.

Figure: Human peripheral blood leukocytes from a patient with an active CMV infection, stained with the CMV Brite antigenemia kit. Immunofluorescence staining of CMV pp65 antigen positive polymorph nuclear cells. Negative cells are counterstained (red) with Evans Blue.