Use of egg-yolk antibody for detection of respiratory syncytial virus in nasal secretions by ELISA.

Egg-yolk immunoglobulins extracted from the eggs of hens immunized with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) have been used as a reagent in double sandwich ELISA for detecting RSV in nasal secretions. The sensitivity of virus detection was the same in indirect ELISA, using rabbit anti chicken globulin conjugate, as when biotinylated yolk globulin and labeled avidin were used for detection. The specificity of ELISA for detecting RSV using yolk antibody was similar to that achieved by indirect immunofluorescence using commercial reagents of mammalian origin. Purified immunoglobulin was easily extracted from egg yolk; the amount of globulin present in a single preparation obtained from a batch of ten eggs was sufficient to carry out 10(6) ELISA tests for RSV detection.