With increasing viral infections in patients immunocompromised due to cancer therapies, organ and bone marrow transplantation, and HIV infection, the use of antiviral therapeutics has increased, and with this the development of antiviral resistance. As the incidence of antiviral resistance increases, the need for a simple and rapid method to determine the susceptibility of a virus becomes more important. Development of such a method is in progress using tissue cultures inoculated with viral suspensions and incubated in the presence of various concentrations of antiviral agents. An enzyme immunoassay has been used to detect viral growth and subsequent determination of an ID5O indicating susceptibility or resistance. Future efforts will involve adaptations of the plaque reduction assay utilizing monoclonal antibody staining of infected cell monolayers to obtain rapid susceptibility results. Additional studies will evaluate the suitability of the Enzyme Linked Virus Inducible System (ELVIS) as a mechanism for antiviral testing.
