Xu S-X, Lan K, Shan Y-L, Wang H, Luo J-Y, Cui F, Huang Y-S, Meng J-P, Zhang X-M, Yin Y-B
The Key Laboratory of Laboratory Medical Diagnostics, Ministry of Education, The Faculty of Laboratory Medicine, Chongqing University of Medical Sciences, Chongqing, PR China.
Arch Virol. 2007 Feb;152(2):431-40. doi: 10.1007/s00705-006-0843-7. Epub 2006 Sep 25.
A novel real-time quantitative method for detecting HCV in serum was established in which the duplex scorpion primer was used to provide a unimolecular probing mechanism for hybridizing the highly conserved 5' noncoding region (5' NCR) of the HCV genome specifically. Through methodological evaluation, we found this new method had a wide linearity, high sensitivity, repeatability and specificity. Compared to the commercial TaqMan method, this method was found to be more sensitive and less costly, and the final results were obtained more quickly. Therefore, it could be applied to diagnose and monitor HCV infection in clinical practice.
