Isolation and identification of influenza viruses from clinical materials in 1977-1993 at Veterans General Hospital-Taipei.
From 1977 to 1993, 15,189 throat swab samples were received for isolation and identification of influenza virus in the Clinical Virology Laboratory, Veterans General Hospital-Taipei. Most of the samples came from the Pediatric Department. There were 634 identified strains of the influenza virus; the successful isolation rate was 4.17% in average/year. Among these isolates, 56.3% (357/634) were influenza B; 12.1% (77/634) were influenza A/H1N1 and 28.1% (178/634) were influenza A/H3N2. About 3.5% (22/634) were classified as flu-like agents because of no reaction with available monoclonal antibodies. In recent years, reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was established here to re-evaluate these virus stocks. This method can provide rapid diagnosis method to identify influenza A/H1N1, A/H3N2 and B. Further, the RT-PCR method and sequencing of amplified DNA could be used to see the variation of virus isolates which were recirculated or which reappeared in the Taipei area.
Department of Pathology, Veterans General Hospital-Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
W T
WT
Liu
H Y
HY
Wei
S T
ST
Hu
C H
CH
Tsai
S R
SR
Chern
H C
HC
Wang
D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D004285:Dogs; D006801:Humans; D008251:Macaca; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009975:Orthomyxoviridae / Q000302:isolation & purification*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D013624:Taiwan; D013997:Time Factors