Pathogen inactivation assay

A method for determining the level of potentially active biological pathogens in a biological material, said method comprising:

• (i) adding to said biological material an effective amount of at least two nucleic acid primer pairs,
• wherein a first nucleic acid primer pair hybridizes under stringent conditions to a first target nucleic acid sequence found in said biological pathogen and a second nucleic acid primer pair hybridizes under stringent conditions to a second target nucleic acid sequence found in said biological pathogen, and
• further wherein said first target nucleic acid sequence and said second target nucleic acid sequence are not identical and said second target nucleic acid sequence contains more nucleic acid residues than said first target nucleic acid sequence;
• (ii) amplifying said target nucleic acid sequences by polymerase chain reaction, said polymerase chain reaction comprising adding at least one polymerase to said biological material containing said nucleic acid primer pairs to form an amplification mixture and thermally cycling said amplification mixture between at least one denaturation temperature and at least one elongation temperature for a period of time sufficient to amplify said target nucleic acid sequences;
• and
• (iii) detecting and quantifying said first and second target nucleic acid sequences, wherein the quantity of said first target nucleic acid sequence is proportional to the number of said biological pathogens in said biological material and the quantity of said second target nucleic acid sequence is proportional to the number of potentially active biological pathogens in said biological material.