Comparison of two commercially available dengue virus (DENV) NS1 capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays using a single clinical sample for diagnosis of acute DENV infection

Clin Vaccine Immunol. 2008 Oct;15(10):1513-8. doi: 10.1128/CVI.00140-08. Epub 2008 Aug 6.

Abstract

Dengue virus (DENV) nonstructural protein 1 (NS1) has shown promise as a novel diagnostic marker of acute DENV infection. Current techniques used to diagnose acute DENV infection, including virus isolation and reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR), are costly and difficult to perform, while traditional serological assays have low sensitivities during the acute stage of infection. Two commercially available NS1 antigen capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs), the Platelia dengue NS1Ag test (Bio-Rad Laboratories, Marnes La Coquette, France) and the Pan-E dengue early ELISA test (Panbio Diagnostics, Brisbane, Australia), were evaluated against a well-characterized panel of 208 real-time RT-PCR- and virus isolation-positive sera, as well as 45 real-time RT-PCR- and serologically negative sera from patients with other acute febrile illnesses. The overall sensitivities were 64.9% (95% confidence interval [CI(95)], 58.2 to 71.1%) for the Panbio test and 83.2% (CI(95), 77.5 to 87.7%) for the Bio-Rad test, with interserotype variation, especially for DENV serotype 4. Predictive models were constructed to identify factors that had a significant influence on a test's outcome with respect to this panel of samples in order to identify the conditions in which the test will be most effective as a diagnostic tool. The immunoglobulin G titer was found to be the only covariate that significantly influenced results in the Bio-Rad test, while serotype and the day postonset were found to significantly influence results in the Panbio test. We concluded that the NS1 capture ELISA is a useful tool that can improve testing algorithms to diagnose DENV infection in single samples from acute and early convalescent cases.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study
  • Evaluation Study
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Dengue / diagnosis*
  • Dengue Virus / isolation & purification*
  • Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay / methods
  • Humans
  • Immunoglobulin G / blood
  • Predictive Value of Tests
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Viral Nonstructural Proteins*
  • Virology / methods*

Substances

  • Immunoglobulin G
  • Viral Nonstructural Proteins