Laboratory diagnosis of respiratory virus infections in 24 hours by utilizing shell vial cultures.

Immunofluorescence staining of centrifugation-enhanced shell vial (SV) cultures for respiratory viruses (RV) after 24 h of incubation, rather than the more commonly prescribed times of 48 h and 5 days, allowed for the detection of 77% of the RV-positive specimens that would ordinarily not have been detected as positive until 48 h. Staining SVs at 24 h also permitted earlier detection of viruses that were missed by rapid antigen detection methods.