OBJECTIVES After four years of Sarajevo siege, the deblocade started on July 1995. Many soldiers involved in the deblocade developed a clinical symptoms of hemorrhagic fever indicating a possible epidemic. METHODS Suspected patients were treated in the war hospital Igman-Fojnica. Blood samples of all the patients were processed on IgM and IgG antibodies with ELISA test, using "the double sandwich" technique. RESULTS IgM and IgG were performed on Puumala (PVV), Hantaan (HTN) and Dobrava antigens. 38 out of 45 treated serums had high antibody titres. Sera of 28 patients had high titres of specific IgM antibodies on Hantaan antigen (12,800). A ten patients had a same titre level for specific antibodies of Puumala antigen. A 20 patients had specific IgG antibodies on Dobrava antigen with the titre 400. Our results confirmed the epidemic for which were responsible two serotypes of HFRS-PVV and HTN. They also proved the existence of a new serotypes appearing for the first time in Sarajevo region. This epidemic confirms that BiH especially Sarajevo region are among the biggest epidemic areas of HFRS in Europa.

In this report we proved that all of three methods for laboratory diagnosis of HSV infections which we used, have approximately the same degree of sensibility. Even though there is no statistically significant differences among sensibility of chosen methods, we think that IF test by monoclonal antibodies is the most suitable method for the routine work, in consideration of the high sensibility, typical specificity and fast results.