Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University
Abstract
Applicability of the reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was evaluated as a routine rapid diagnostic test for dengue virus infection. A total of 160 acute phase sera from patients with clinical diagnosis of dengue fever was examined both by the RT-PCR and IgM-ELISA. Of these, 9 (6%) were positive for both RT-PCR and IgM-ELISA, 61 were positive for IgM-ELISA only and 31 (19%) for RT-PCR only. Both techniques gave negative results in the remaining 59 (37%) specimens. The diagnostic efficiency of IgM-ELISA was statistically better than the RT-PCR even when the specimens were collected on the 3rd or 5th days of the disease. Considering the operational cost in the tests, the acute serum specimens should first be tested by the IgM-ELISA, followed by the RT-PCR on the negative specimens in order to increase the diagnostic efficiency with reasonable cost
