Cycling probe technology to quantify and discriminate between wild-type varicella-zoster virus and Oka vaccine strains.

•Cycling probe technology is an appropriate method for the detection of SNPs.•The real time PCR using cycling probe could recognize VZV wild and vOka which include SNP.•Additionally, we demonstrated the utility of cycling probe for the quantitative analysis of each viral DNA load.•The inter and intra assay indicate that real time PCR using cycling probe was highly reproducible.•Our developed real time PCR can be used for analysis of clinical swab with or without DNA extraction.