Evidence of false-positive results in a commercially available rotavirus assay in the vaccine era, Australia, 2011 to 2012

S Ye; S Roczo-Farkas; D M Whiley; S B Lambert; J Robson; C Heney; G Nimmo; K Grimwood; T P Sloots; C D Kirkwood

doi:10.2807/ese.18.21.20483-en

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Evidence of false-positive results in a commercially available rotavirus assay in the vaccine era, Australia, 2011 to 2012

S Ye^1,2, S Roczo-Farkas³, D M Whiley^1,2, S B Lambert^1,4, J Robson⁵, C Heney², G Nimmo², K Grimwood¹, T P Sloots^1,2, C D Kirkwood^3,6
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Affiliations: ¹ Queensland Paediatric Infectious Diseases Laboratory, Queensland Children’s Medical Research Institute, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia ² Microbiology Division, Pathology Queensland Central Laboratory, Herston, Queensland, Australia ³ Enteric Virus Research Group, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, Parkville, Victoria, Australia ⁴ Queensland Health Immunisation Program, Queensland Health, Brisbane, Australia ⁵ Sullivan Nicolaides Pathology, Brisbane, Australia ⁶ Department of Microbiology, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia

Correspondence:
Correspondence: S Lambert
sblambert uq.edu.au
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Citation style for this article: Ye S, Roczo-Farkas S, Whiley D M, Lambert S B, Robson J, Heney C, Nimmo G, Grimwood K, Sloots T P, Kirkwood C D. Evidence of false-positive results in a commercially available rotavirus assay in the vaccine era, Australia, 2011 to 2012. Euro Surveill. 2013;18(21):pii=20483. https://doi.org/10.2807/ese.18.21.20483-en Received: 16 Apr 2013

Abstract

Concerns were raised about specificity of the VIKIA Rota-Adeno immunochromatographic kit. Only 28-37% of samples positive with the VIKIA kit could be confirmed using two real-time RT-PCR assays and three ELISA kits. On re-analysis of a subset of the positive samples, 86% remained positive with the VIKIA kit, however, 90% remained negative in the other assays. In a highly vaccinated population we found a high number of false-positive rotavirus tests with a widely-used commercial kit.