Comparison of Techniques for Dengue Detection: A research study in a medical College of Rajasthan

Abstract

Early diagnosis of dengue can benefit timely clinical intervention by correct followups, etiological investigations and timely making aware the community at large. Detection of viral nonstructrural glycoprotein(NS1), Immunoglobulins IgM by rapid card test and or ELISA test has been found to be useful biomarker for this. A number of rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) and enzyme-linked immune sorbent assays (ELISAs) targeting these NS1 antigen (Ag) and IgM are now commercially available. Here we evaluated these tests using a well-characterized panel of clinical samples to determine their effectiveness for early diagnosis by finding the sensitivity and specificity of RDT and ELISA and hence also comparing the two techniques for the most accurate results by these parameters. A total of 300 samples of patients who were clinically found to be having symptoms similar of dengue were taken and run on Rapid NS1 & IgM along with ELISA plate reader in a medical college hospital of Rajasthan state which has this virus in all rainy season.