COMPARISON OF THE MGB ALERT® BK VIRUS 2.0 DETECTION REAGENT ASR (NANOGEN) WITH A -HOME-BREW- TAQMAN ASSAY FOR DETECTION OF BK VIRUS

Infection with BK virus, a polyomavirus, occurs in early childhood in a large percentage of the population but is relatively asymptomatic.  Following initial infections the BK virus normally remains latent but can be reactivated in immunocompromised individuals.  This reactivation of BK virus has been observed in renal transplant patients undergoing immunosuppression and has been implicated in allograft dysfunction and rejection.  Various molecular techniques have been developed to monitor the levels of the BK virus in renal transplant recipients.  Two PCR-based assays are evaluated in this study to determine their ability to efficiently detect BK virus DNA.  The first assay, MGB Alert^® BK Virus 2.0 Detection Reagent ASR, is available commercially as an analyte specific reagent and the other is a “home-brew” TaqMan PCR assay.  Both assays detected BK virus in various clinical samples and both assays detected a commercially available BK viral DNA standard at concentrations as low as 5 copies per PCR.  DNA from another polyomavirus, the JC virus was used as a PCR template to test the specificity of these assays.  The JC viral DNA resulted in false positive results for the “home-brew” assay but negative results for the MGB Alert^® assay.  Both assays were found to be effective for detecting BK virus DNA but the commercial assay was found to be more specific for the BK virus.