The detection of specific DNA sequences by PCR has proved extremely valuable for the
analysis of genetic disorders and the diagnosis of a variety of infectious disease pathogens
(7, 8, 10). However, not unusually, high sensitivity and specificity are required for diagnostic
purposes. In these situations, nested PCR has been devised to improve the PCR assay (10,
11). Nested PCR is a two-step procedure in which the products of a first PCR using outer
primers are re-amplified using a second set of inner primers located within the previously …

Molecular techniques based on the detection of genomic sequences by reverse transcription
(RT)-PCR, nested PCR, or real-time PCR have made possible the rapid diagnosis of
dengue virus (DENV) infections, and these approaches have been accepted by clinical
laboratories as the new standard method for the detection of dengue virus in acute-phase
serum samples. One of these PCR-based assays, the two-step RT nested PCR (RT-NPCR)
technique is used routinely in laboratories worldwide. In the present study, the two-step RT …