Clinical Information

Mumps is a generalized illness characterized by fever and by inflammation and swelling of the salivary glands, particularly the parotid glands. Mumps is usually not severe in children, but in the adult, the inflammation may involve the ovaries or testes (orchitis). Mumps is also one of the most common causes of aseptic meningitis and encephalitis. The etiological agent is a member of the paramyxovirus group.

Inflammation and swelling of the parotid glands (parotitis) in mumps infection is usually sufficiently diagnostic to preclude serological confirmation. However, since one-third of mumps infections are subclinical, viral isolation and/or some other serological procedure may be required. An example of the latter would be patients presenting with orchitis or meningoencephalitis, two of the most common sequelae of mumps infection, without salivary gland involvement.

Virus isolation is cumbersome and time-consuming and is usually an impractical procedure for the typical clinical laboratory. Serodiagnosis of mumps infection has been accomplished by neutralization, hemagglutination-inhibition (HI), indirect immunofluorescence, and complement fixation (CF). These methods lack specificity, which limits their usefulness in determining immune status. The HI test also requires pretreatment of test sera to remove nonspecific inhibitors of hemagglutination.

Enzyme immunoassays (EIA, ELISA) are sensitive and specific for the detection and measurement of serum proteins. Their sensitivity equals that of the neutralization test and is greater than CF or HI. They are, therefore, reliable tests for the determination of immune status.