Background: Human rotavirus (HRV) is the causative agent of severe gastroenteritis in children and responsible for two million hospitalizations and more than a half-million deaths annually. Sequence characteristics of the gene segments encoding the VP7 and VP4 proteins are used for the genotype classification of rotavirus. A wide variety of molecular methods are available, mainly based on rever...

Background: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder (EBV-PTLD) is a known and serious condition for the hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. This study evaluated the prevalence of EBV in umbilical cord samples of healthy pregnant women in Baghdad, Iraq.  Methods: 800 umbilical cord blood (UCB) samples were collected from healthy pregnant women. The ...

In the present study a protocol of in situ reverse transcriptase-nested polymerase chain reaction (in situ RT-nested PCR) was examined based on the following modifications. (i) To exclude false positive signals caused by "DNA repair mechanisms" and "endogenous priming", a two-step PCR was applied after reverse transcription. The first step was performed in the presence of extrinsic primers and ...

PURPOSE Noroviruses (NoV) are increasingly recognized as an important cause for acute gastroenteritis, worldwide. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and sequencing are the methods of choice for the detection of NoVs, but there is currently no consensus about the primers to be used in these assays. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this study, five published primer sets were evalu...

During the period from July 2002 to June 2003, infectious bursal disease (IBD) was suspected in 101 commercial flocks of broiler chickens on the basis of clinical and post mortem findings in some districts of the Haryana state, India. Bursal samples were collected randomly from 20 flocks for the detection of infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) by reverse transcriptionpolymerase chain reactio...

Leukemic cells from bone marrow (BM) of 17 infants and 127 children with newly diagnosed ALL, as well as fetal liver and BM and normal infant BM samples, were analyzed for presence of a t(4;11) translocation using standard cytogenetic techniques and expression of an MLL-AF4 fusion transcript using standard reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assays as well as nested RT-PCR ...

A traditional single-stage reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) procedure is effective in determining West Nile (WN) virus in avian tissue and infected cell cultures. However, the procedure lacks the sensitivity to detect WN virus in equine tissue. We describe an RT-nested PCR (RT-nPCR) procedure that identifies the North American strain of WN virus directly in equine and av...

Many of the current reverse transcription (RT)-PCR assays for the detection of hepatitis C virus (HCV) RNA are multistep processes which use multiple enzymes and buffers. The assays are also often suboptimal, requiring nested amplification to achieve the desired levels of sensitivity. As a result, these assays are cumbersome and prone to false-positive results. The susceptibility to contaminati...