There are two serotypes of herpes simplex virus, type 1 and type 2. HSV type 1 usually causes oropharyngeal infection while type 2 usually genitourinary infection. However, the clinical discrimination between two serotypes in eliciting disease
entities
is becoming uncertain. Furthermore, clinical discrimination is sometimes regarded of no importance due to lack of difference in treatment. However, serotyping is required for explicit diagnosis or epidemiologic survey.
The conventional serological assay such as ELISA can not discriminate between HSV type 1and type 2. Thus we tried to discriminate serum antibodies against HSV type 1 and type 2 by immunoblot analysis and compared it with the results of dot blot
assay.
Sera were separated from pheripheral blood of 10 patients who visited the department of dermatology or gynecology, Mok-Dong Hospital, Ewha Womans University from Jun. to Oct. 1994 for symptoms suspicious of genital herpes, 31 normal adult women,
20
pregnant women and 48 infants or children.
Immunoblot analysis of HSV type 1 and type 2 revealed various patterns according to sera, not showing typical specific patterns, However, the tow types could be differentiated in that type 1 frequently showed 134, 120, 106, 76, 71, 58, 50, 47kDa
immunoblot bands, while type 2 showed 182, 126, 115, 109, 102, 95, 85, 81, 67kDa bands, frequently. Serum antibody positive rates against HSV type 1 and type 2 assayed by dot blot and immunoblot were contradictory in some cases, And it was false
positive cases in dot blot for anti-HSV type 2 antibody which was most frequent, showing crossreaction dut to common antigenicity in whole virion antigen.
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