Enhanced HSV Recovery from Neuronal Tissues of Latently Infected Rabbit 1

Abstract

Summary

The classical minced tissue method and enzymatic cell dispersion methods were compared for isolating HSV from neural tissues of 48 latently infected and 5 acutely infected rabbits. The ECD method resulted in a 62% HSV isolation rate from 106 trigeminal ganglia samples and the minced tissue method resulted in a 21% HSV isolation rate from the same samples. Thirty-one percent of the 106 midbrain samples were positive for HSV by the ECD method as compared to 6% by the minced method. There were 64 instances when the ECD method detected HSV and the minced method did not. There were no instances in which the minced method alone was positive. The ECD method was faster than or equally as fast as the minced method in HSV detection in 97% of samples tested.