Herein we review broad issues that affect test performance for agents that produce persistent infections. Using PRRSV as an example, the relationship between "disease transition stages" and "diagnostic transition stages" is discussed using meta-analyses of diagnostic data (n = 4307 results) from the refereed literature to highlight the key issues. Although diagnostic technology will continue to improve, it may be concluded from the analysis that there can be no single best diagnostic approach; rather, the choice of specimen and test must be tailored to the specific testing objective. In most cases, meeting the testing objective(s) will require the use of more than one assay and/or specimen type.

中文翻译：

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在“疾病过渡阶段”的背景下理解和解释PRRSV诊断。

本文中，我们回顾了影响产生持续性感染的试剂的测试性能的广泛问题。以PRRSV为例，使用来自参考文献的诊断数据的荟萃分析（n = 4307结果）来讨论“疾病过渡阶段”与“诊断过渡阶段”之间的关系，以突出关键问题。尽管诊断技术将继续改进，但从分析中可以得出结论，不可能有单一的最佳诊断方法。相反，必须根据特定的测试目标来选择样本和测试。在大多数情况下，要达到测试目标将需要使用不止一种测定法和/或样本类型。