The Standardization and Control of Serology and Nucleic Acid Testing for Infectious Diseases

Abstract

Historically, the detection of antibodies against infectious disease agents was achieved using test systems that utilized biological functions such as neutralization, complement fixation, hemagglutination, or visualization of binding of antibodies to specific antigens, using testing doubling dilutions of the patient sample to determine an endpoint. These test systems have since been replaced by automated platforms, many of which have been integrated into general medical pathology.