[Western blotting in the serologic diagnosis of enterovirus infections. I. Detection of coxsackie virus antibodies in reference sera and sera of experimentally infected mice].

The introduction of rapid serological diagnosis of enterovirus infections is faced with the problem of inter-type cross-reactions. Therefore the method of choice is still the virus-neutralization test on cell cultures and on suckling mice resp., i.e. methods which are expensive and time consuming and demanding on laboratory equipment. The detection of antibodies against the Coxsackie virus by means of Western blotting revealed a specific reaction of commercial hyperimmune diagnostic rabbit as well as of sera obtained after oral infection of mice. The application of the method in the diagnosis of human enterovirus infections will be the subject of the subsequent part of this study.