The present invention relates to a process for the detection of nucleic acids from biological or environmental samples. The technique involves the amplification of the nucleic acid of interest after conversion to cDNA if necessary, after which the amplified nucleic acid is used as the template for further amplification by the real-time PCR (RT-PCR) technique. This combination of amplification procedures increases the sensitivity and specificity of the amplification compared with conventional amplification techniques. The invention also relates to primers for the use in this method and a diagnostic test kit.
