Viral culture

Viral culture is a laboratory test in which samples are placed with a cell type that the virus being tested for is able to infect. If the cells show changes, known as cytopathic effects, then the culture is positive.

Traditional viral culture has been generally superseded by shell vial culture, in which the sample is centrifuged onto a single layer of cells and viral growth is measured by antigen detection methods. This greatly reduces the time to detection for slow growing viruses such as cytomegalovirus, for which the method was developed. In addition, the centrifugation step in shell viral culture enhances the sensitivity of this method because after centrifugation, the viral particles of the sample are in close proximity to the cells.