Use of the haemagglutination-inhibition test in the study of museum strains of neuroviruses.

Haemagglutinating antigens for various strains of tick-borne and Japanese B encephalitis viruses and for certain mutants of the virus of American equine encephalomyelitis have been prepared at the D. I. Ivanovski Institute of Virology of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, Moscow, and used in cross haemagglutination-inhibition tests with the corresponding immune sera. The results of these experiments suggest that the haemagglutination-inhibition test using goose red cells constitutes a simple, rapid and accurate method for the serological diagnosis of diseases caused by the neuroviruses mentioned above and for the identification of isolated strains of these viruses, and would be of considerable value in epidemiological surveys.