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Hindawi Publishing Corporation International Journal of Microbiology Volume 2010, Article ID 695104, 4 pages doi:10.1155/2010/695104 Research Article Search for Anti-EA(D) Antibodies in Subjects with an “Isolated VCA IgG” Pattern Massimo De Paschale, Debora Cagnin, Teresa Cerulli, Maria Teresa Manco, Carlo Agrappi, Paola Mirri, Arianna Gatti, Cristina Rescaldani, and Pierangelo Clerici Microbiology Unit, Hospital of Legnano, Via Candiani 2, 20025 Legnano MI, Italy Correspondence should be addressed to Massimo De Paschale, massimo.depaschale@ao-legnano.it Received 5 January 2010; Accepted 16 May 2010 Academic Editor: Vasco Azevedo Copyright © 2010 Massimo De Paschale et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The presence of an “isolated viral capsid antigen (VCA) IgG” pattern in serum is not easy to interpret without the aid of further tests, such as specific immunoblotting or a virus genome search, that often give rise to organisational and economic problems. However, one alternative is to use an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to detect anti-early antigen (EA) antibodies, which can be found in about 85% of subjects with acute Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infections. The purpose of this work was to search for anti-EA(D) antibodies in 130 samples with an isolated VCA IgG pattern at ELISA screening and classified as being indicative of past (102 cases) or acute (28 cases) infection on the basis of the immunoblotting results. Thirty-seven samples (28.5%) were positive for anti-EA(D), of which 25 (89.3%) had been classified by immunoblotting as indicating acute and 12 (11.8%) past EB