Patent ID: 8551706

Claim:
A method for detecting the presence of West Nile virus (WNV) in a biological sample, the method comprising: isolating nucleic acids from a biological sample suspected of containing WNV; amplifying the nucleic acids using a sense and an antisense primer wherein each of the primers is not more than about 60 nucleotides in length and is sufficiently complementary to a portion of the sense and antisense strands, respectively, of the isolated nucleic acid to hybridize therewith, and (a) the sense primer comprises SEQ ID NO:37 or a nucleotide sequence having at least 90% sequence identity thereto; (b) the antisense primer comprises SEQ ID NO:38 or a nucleotide sequence having at least 90% sequence identity thereto; and detecting the presence of the amplified nucleic acids as an indication of the presence of WNV in the sample.