caa a22 4500 445378328 CHVBK 20180317143010.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170323e20111201xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s10393-012-0742-1 doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s10393-012-0742-1 Estimating Duration of Infection with Avidity Assays: Potential Limitations and Recommendations for Improvement [Elektronische Daten] [Johanna Varner, M. Dearing] Recent infections often have higher pathogen loads. The number of recent infections can therefore be used to estimate transmission rates in a host population. Antibody avidity assays are an emerging technique to infer infection age in both domestic and wild animals. These assays have the potential to supplant intensive mark-recapture efforts for identification of recent infections, but their results may be confounded by antibody titer. We examined the effectiveness of an avidity assay for identifying recent infections of Sin Nombre virus, a hantavirus in North America that establishes a chronic infection in deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus). We found that assay performance statistics such as sensitivity, specificity, and positive predictive value for low avidity scores were significantly improved when we accounted for antibody titer in the analyses. Without accounting for titer, avidity assays may classify samples with low titers as recent infections regardless of actual infection history, thereby overestimating the number of recent infections in a population and inflating estimates of transmission rates and/or human exposure risk. We recommend that antibody titers meet a minimum threshold for use in avidity assays, and we emphasize the importance of considering titer and dilution in the validation of newly developed avidity assays. International Association for Ecology and Health, 2012 wildlife disease nationallicence avidity assays nationallicence infection history nationallicence Sin Nombre virus nationallicence Varner Johanna Department of Biology, University of Utah, 257 South 1400 East, Rm 201, 84112, Salt Lake City, UT, USA aut Dearing M. Department of Biology, University of Utah, 257 South 1400 East, Rm 201, 84112, Salt Lake City, UT, USA aut EcoHealth Springer-Verlag 8/4(2011-12-01), 512-518 1612-9202 8:4<512 2011 8 10393 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-012-0742-1 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 brief-communication jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10393-012-0742-1 text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Varner Johanna Department of Biology, University of Utah, 257 South 1400 East, Rm 201, 84112, Salt Lake City, UT, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Dearing M. Department of Biology, University of Utah, 257 South 1400 East, Rm 201, 84112, Salt Lake City, UT, USA aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- EcoHealth Springer-Verlag 8/4(2011-12-01), 512-518 1612-9202 8:4<512 2011 8 10393 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer