The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has developed a multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay capable of simultaneously detecting all five known hepatitis viruses, according to an abstract presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases (Nov. 7-11, Boston). While the five viral hepatitides are clinically indistinguishable, various testing algorithms are employed to determine their etiology. Nucleic acid testing (NAT) remains the gold standard for diagnosis of active and viremic stages of infection, the CDC says. The CDC researchers designed standardized TaqMan (Life Technologies) assays for simultaneous detection of RNA for hepatitis A, C, D, and E viruses (HAV, HCV, HDV, and HEV) and the DNA for hepatitis B virus (HBV). After individual PCR assays for each virus were optimized to run under identical experimental conditions, the assays’ performances were evaluated on TaqMan Array Cards (TAC) to detect the five viral genomes simultaneously. “The hepatitis TAC assay has great potential for simplifying laboratory testing of viral hepatitides,” Maja Kodani, Ph.D., an associate service fellow in CDC’s Division of Viral Hepatitis, tells DTET. “It was not developed to replace current hepatitis testing algorithms; instead, it was developed to address a need […]