Patent ID: 6849407

Claim:
A method for detecting the presence or absence of VZV in a biological sample from an individual, said method comprising: performing at least one cycling step, wherein a cycling step comprises an amplifying step and a hybridizing step, wherein said amplifying step comprises contacting said sample with a pair of gene 28 primers to produce a gene 28 amplification product if a VZV gene 28 nucleic acid molecule is present in said sample, wherein said pair of gene 28 primers comprises a first gene 28 primer and a second gene 28 primer, wherein said first gene 28 primer is no more than 30 nucleotides in length and comprises the sequence 5′-GAC AAT ATC ATA TAC ATG GAA TGT G-3′ (SEQ ID NO:1), wherein said hybridizing step comprises contacting said sample with a pair of gene 28 probes, wherein the members of said pair of gene 28 probes hybridize to said amplification product within no more than five nucleotides of each other, wherein a first gene 28 probe of said pair of gene 28 probes is labeled with a donor fluorescent moiety and wherein a second gene 28 probe of said pair of gene 28 probes is labeled with a corresponding acceptor fluorescent moiety; and detecting the presence or absence of fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) between said donor fluorescent moiety of said first gene 28 probe and said acceptor fluorescent moiety of said second gene 28 probe, wherein the presence of FRET is indicative of the presence of VZV in said biological sample, and wherein the absence of FRET is indicative of the absence of VZV in said biological sample.