A rapid quantitative PCR-based assay for testing antiviral agents against human adenoviruses demonstrates type specific differences in ribavirin activity.

Human adenovirus (HAdV) infections are increasingly frequent and potentially fatal as a disseminated disease in highly immunocompromised patients. Determining the in vitro sensitivity of HAdV to antiviral agents is not an easy task because HAdV CPE reduction assays are difficult to interpret and may take more than 1 week. We developed a phenotypic assay for testing the antiviral activity during the first round of replication using HAdV DNA concentration as an objective readout within 30h. After evaluating the assay with cidofovir, we focused on determining the antiviral of ribavirin against different HAdV serotypes because clinical response of HAdV infections towards ribavirin treatment varied considerably.