Division of Virology, Defence Research & Development Establishment, Gwalior - 474 002, India.
Abstracts of the papers presented at the XVIII National Conference of Indian Virological Society at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India, December 11–13, 2008.
Chikungunya virus (CHIKV), is the considerable public health importance in Southeast Asian and African countries. India has also witnesses an explosive outbreak of unprecedented magnitude in last 2–3 years that has swapped across the country from South to North. This is one of the largest and most severe epidemic in the history of Chikungunya and it has resurged after a gap of 32 years affecting more than 10, 00, 000 persons covering all most all the states of India. The laboratory diagnosis is based essentially on virus isolation, but RT-PCR and antibody based IgM ELISA assays were already described for specific detection of CHIKV in mosquitoes or clinical samples. The PCR based methods are found to be very expensive, requires trained manpower and difficult for implementation at hospital/filed level at this point of time. The antibody based IgM ELISA system are found to be cost effective but it takes minimum a week for the patient to develop antibody to an detection level. Therefore simple rapid, specific and sensitive antigen detection system is designed for early diagnosis as well as effective surveillance of CHIKV. In the present study, we report the development and evaluation of a highly sensitive and specific double antibody Sandwich ELISA test system for diagnosis of Chikungunya infection by detecting the presence of viral antigen in acute phase patient serum samples was developed employing the rabbit HIS and mouse HIS as capture and detector antibody respectively. The double antibody Sandwich ELISA developed in this study is very specific and sensitive for the early detection of CHIKV in serum as well as CSF samples for better patient management. The assay is also a useful test in laboratory for detection, quantification and quality control of viral antigen in cell culture supernatant. The antigen capture ELISA has been evaluated with reasonably good number of serum and CSF samples from Chikungunya outbreak during 2006 and the comparison of the assay with other ELISA formats and RT-PCR showed excellent correlation.
