Viral Isolation versus Immune Staining of Infected Cell Cultures for the Laboratory Diagnosis of Herpes Simplex Virus Infections

Herpes simplex virus (HSV) is generally the most common agent isolated by viral diagnostic laboratories. At The Children's Hospital Viral Diagnostic Laboratory, HSV represents nearly 40o of all viruses isolated. The ultimate goal for HSV diagnosis is to have a rapid, sensitive, reliable, simple, and inexpensive test that will provide clinically useful results. Immunoperoxidase and peroxidase-antiperoxidase staining can be an effective means for rapidly identifying HSV antigens either in infected cell cultures or directly in clinical specimens (1, 2, 11, 12, 14, 15, 18). Recently, several commercial HSV detection kits involving immunoperoxidase staining have been evaluated with vari-