Congenital Assay Panel Launched to the UK Market

Abbott Diagnostics has developed a panel of congenital assays for its popular ARCHITECT platform. These assays can be used for the detection of human cytomegalovirus (CMV), Toxoplasma gondii and rubella virus.

The Toxoplasma IgG assay has now been launched in the UK with IgM and avidity assays to follow. Rubella and CMV IgG and IgM assays are already available and CMV avidity is due for launch soon.

While other avidity assays remove low avidity antibodies by washing with chaotropic reagents, the new ARCHITECT AVIcomp technology selectively removes the high avidity antibodies and directly detects low avidity antibodies for improved diagnosis of acute or recurrent infection.

Low avidity assays are important for confirming primary infections while high avidity assays are used to detect non-primary (re-infection or reactivation of previous infection).