Abstract

Shamala Devi Sekaran*, Ew Cheng Lan and Geetha Subramaniam

Difficulties in the management of dengue infections include the lack of rapid diagnostic methods and symptoms of dengue are often confused with those of other diseases. Five commercial kits were evaluated for the detection of dengue-specific IgM and IgG antibodies using sera obtained from patients with primary and secondary dengue infections, as well as other febrile illnesses. All kits were compared to the in-house IgM ELISA and HI assays. The rapid test kits took either 30 to 45 min (PanBio Dengue Duo Cassette, Accusens Dengue Virus Rapid Strip Test, and Unitest Dengue IgM and IgG Combo Rapid Test) or between 2 to 4 h (PanBio Dengue Duo Capture ELISA, and Antivirus IgM Detecion Kit 96 [Pentax Corporation]). Most kits were able to detect IgM in more than 90% of the secondary convalescent sera, while IgG detection was generally high (80 to 100%). All five kits showed high specificity when tested against sera from other febrile patients, and have been shown to be extremely useful in the diagnosis of dengue infections.