{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,18]],"date-time":"2026-09-18T16:12:56Z","timestamp":1789747976248,"version":"4.0.1"},"reference-count":24,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,9]],"date-time":"2025-12-09T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1765238400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Cell. Infect. Microbiol."],"abstract":"<jats:p>\n                    Accurate, timely diagnosis of varicella\u2013zoster virus (VZV) is important for treatment and infection control. While loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) is operationally simple, nonspecific priming can degrade performance. We assessed a polyethylene glycol\u2013modified LAMP (PEG-LAMP) that tunes the reaction microenvironment via macromolecular crowding. PEG (1 \u03bcL per reaction) was titrated across concentrations; 100 mM was selected as the optimized condition because negatives remained at baseline while target amplification kinetics were maintained. PEG-LAMP preserved a log\u2013linear relation between threshold time and input and improved the detection limit from 10\n                    <jats:sup>3<\/jats:sup>\n                    to 10\n                    <jats:sup>2<\/jats:sup>\n                    copies\/\u03bcL compared with conventional LAMP. Precision at a fixed input exhibited low variability, and specificity was supported by flat traces in non-target reactions. In a 30-sample panel (15 spiked positives, 15 negatives) tested in parallel by PCR, conventional LAMP, and PEG-LAMP, PEG-LAMP was fully concordant with PCR and yielded shorter time-to-threshold for positives, whereas conventional LAMP produced one false negative and four false positives. Taken together, the results demonstrate that microenvironmental tuning with PEG provides a low-complexity means to suppress nonspecific LAMP while preserving on-target amplification, yielding a lower detection limit and faster time-to-result with PCR-level qualitative agreement in clinical VZV diagnosis.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/fcimb.2025.1718986","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,9]],"date-time":"2025-12-09T06:30:48Z","timestamp":1765261848000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":2,"title":["Polyethylene glycol modified LAMP assay enables sensitive and specific clinical detection of varicella-zoster virus"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"15","author":[{"given":"Lei","family":"Zhang","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jun","family":"Tian","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Wenjie","family":"Fang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Bin","family":"Xu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Weinan","family":"Guo","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Saiping","family":"Lv","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Li","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,12,9]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1035","DOI":"10.3390\/v16071035","article-title":"A review of atypical cutaneous histological manifestations of herpes zoster","volume":"16","author":"Daruish","year":"2024","journal-title":"Viruses."},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"567","DOI":"10.1080\/00325481.2017.1335574","article-title":"Herpes zoster - typical and atypical presentations","volume":"129","author":"Dayan","year":"2017","journal-title":"Postgrad Med."},{"key":"B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"5548","DOI":"10.1038\/s41598-018-23930-1","article-title":"Real-time detection and monitoring of loop mediated amplification (LAMP) reaction using self-quenching and de-quenching fluorogenic probes","volume":"8","author":"Gadkar","year":"2018","journal-title":"Sci. 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