A pseudovirus-based neutralizing antibody assay for measuring neutralizing antibody against rabies virus
Journal of Clinical Microbiology·
- DOI
- 10.1128/jcm.00877-26
- PMID
- —
- PMCID
- —
- OpenAlex
- —
- Study type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- American Society for Microbiology
- Article type
- journal-article
- Integrity
- current
Why this research matters now
The assay offers a safer and more accessible alternative to the gold standard RFFIT for post-vaccination antibody screening and monitoring, requiring lower biosafety measures and laboratory resources. This may facilitate broader implementation of serological testing for rabies prevention programs, particularly for identifying vaccine nonresponders at risk of rabies exposure.
Structured evidence summary
Research question
The study aimed to establish and validate a pseudovirus-based neutralizing antibody assay for detecting human antibodies against rabies virus and to compare its performance with existing methods.
Study design
The authors developed a pseudovirus system using pXN2-RABV-G harboring the rabies virus G gene and evaluated assay characteristics including precision, robustness, linearity, stability, inclusivity, and limit of detection. Performance was compared with commercial ELISA and the rapid fluorescent focus inhibition test using serum samples from 103 vaccine recipients collected between 2019 and 2023.
Population and setting
The validation included 103 recipients of rabies vaccination tested between 2019 and 2023. No geographic location or clinical setting is specified in the abstract.
Main findings
The pseudovirus neutralizing antibody assay demonstrated broad robustness, precision, linearity from 0.09 to 93.73 IU/mL, and a limit of detection of 2.63 IU/mL with coefficient of variation below 20%. Agreement with commercial ELISA and RFFIT was substantial to near-perfect (kappa 0.74 and 0.82 respectively) with strong linear correlation (R² > 0.90). Neutralizing antibody titers correlated significantly with vaccine dose number and time since most recent vaccination; geometric mean titer increased progressively from 3.15 IU/mL after one dose to 13.40 IU/mL after five doses.
Public-health relevance
The assay offers a safer and more accessible alternative to the gold standard RFFIT for post-vaccination antibody screening and monitoring, requiring lower biosafety measures and laboratory resources. This may facilitate broader implementation of serological testing for rabies prevention programs, particularly for identifying vaccine nonresponders at risk of rabies exposure.
Important limitations
This summary relies on the supplied single-article abstract and bibliographic metadata. The abstract does not report explicit study limitations such as sample size justification, representativeness of the validation cohort, cross-reactivity testing with other lyssaviruses, or longitudinal follow-up data. Decision-grade interpretation requires review of the complete published article.
GIDS interpretation
The article describes a laboratory methods validation study for rabies neutralizing antibody detection and was indexed with disease term 'Rabies' and topic terms 'Treatment' and 'Vaccination', reflecting its focus on post-exposure prophylaxis monitoring. The classifier links indicate discoverability through rabies vaccination and diagnostic testing queries but do not indicate association with a live surveillance signal or outbreak investigation.
Related GIDS surveillance
Literature context does not validate, explain, or change a surveillance signal. Exact and contextual relationships are shown separately.
Evidence relationships
This article has 8 auditable classifier relationships to diseases, places, topics, and study design.