Performance of Kalon herpes simplex virus 2 assay using dried blood spots among young women in Uganda.

The study evaluated the performance of the Kalon HSV-2 assay on dried blood spots (DBS) of various dilutions compared with plasma from young women aged 18-24 years in Uganda. We estimated the sensitivity and specificity of three DBS dilutions using plasma as the reference. All three evaluated DBS dilutions yielded low sensitivities and specificities with DBS 1:2 yielding the highest concurrence. Other HSV-2 assays should be examined with regard to their utility for testing DBS.