Abstract
Chikungunya fever (CHIKF) has re-emerged as an arboviral disease that mimics clinical symptoms of other diseases such as dengue, malaria, as well as other alphavirus-related illnesses leading to problems with definitive diagnosis of the infection. Herein we describe the development and evaluation of a sensitive epitope-blocking ELISA (EB-ELISA) capable of specifically detecting anti-chikungunya virus (CHIKV) antibodies in clinical samples. The assay uses a monoclonal antibody (mAb) that binds an epitope on the E2 protein of CHIKV and does not exhibit cross-reactivity to other related alphaviruses. We also demonstrated the use of recombinant CHIK virus-like particles (VLPs) as a safe alternative antigen to infectious virions in the assay. Based on testing of 60 serum samples from patients in the acute or convalescent phase of CHIKV infection, the EB-ELISA provided us with 100% sensitivity, and exhibited 98.5% specificity when Ross River virus (RRV)- or Barmah Forest virus (BFV)-immune serum samples were included. This assay meets the public health demands of a rapid, robust, sensitive and specific, yet simple assay for specifically diagnosing CHIK-infections in humans.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 55-61 |
| Journal | Journal of Virological Methods |
| Volume | 222 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2015 |
Keywords
- west-nile-virus
- linked-immunosorbent-assay
- valley encephalitis-virus
- monoclonal-antibodies
- diagnostic-accuracy
- universal detection
- reunion island
- insect cells
- ns1 protein
- pcr assay
