When serial ten-fold
dilutions of DNA template extracted from MBV positive
tissue (134 ng to 1.34 pg DNA) was compared
using the one step method and the nested method,
both detected MBV at the same limit (13.42 pg total
DNA), if the number of cycles in the one step method
was increased to 40 (data not shown). This indicates
an equivalent sensitivity of the two methods when
clinical samples were tested. Our attempts to amplify
the MBV isolates using either of the protocols described
by Lu et al. (1993) and Hsu et al. (2000) were
unsuccessful. This finding could be explained by
MBV strain differences or by our inability to exactly
reproduce the testing parameters from their protocols