Abstract
Coxsackievirus B3 (CVB3) is the most common pathogen that induces acute and chronic viral myocarditis in children. The cytopathic effect (CPE)-based neutralization test (Nt-CPE) and the plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT) are the most common methods for measuring neutralizing antibody titers against CVB3 in blood serum samples. However, these two methods are inefficient for CVB3 vaccine clinical trials, which require the testing of a large number of serum specimens. In this study, we developed an efficient neutralization test based on the enzyme-linked immunospot (Nt-ELISPOT) assay for measuring CVB3-neutralizing antibodies. This modified ELISPOT assay was based on the use of a monoclonal antibody against the viral capsid protein VP1 to detect the cells that are infected with CVB3, which, after immunoperoxidase staining, are counted as spots using an automated ELISPOT analyzer. Using the modified ELISPOT assay, we characterized the infection kinetics of CVB3 and divided the infection process of CVB3 on a cluster of cells into four phases. The stability of the Nt-ELISPOT was then evaluated. We found that over a wide range of infectious doses (10(2) to 10(6.5)× 50% tissue culture infectious dose [TCID(50)] per well), the neutralizing titers of the sera were steady as long as they were tested during the log phase or the first half of the stationary phase of growth of the spots. We successfully shortened the testing period from 7 days to approximately 20 h. We also found that there was a good correlation (R(2) = 0.9462) between the Nt-ELISPOT and the Nt-CPE assays. Overall, the Nt-ELISPOT assay is a reliable and efficient method for measuring neutralizing antibodies in serum.