Background: Japanese encephalitis (JE) is a major public health concern
in Asia including India. Objectives: To evaluate an in-house developed
dipstick enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test vis-à-vis
two commercial kits for detection of JE virus-specific IgM antibodies.
Setting and Design: Comparative study carried out in Research and
Development centre. Materials and Methods: A total of 136 specimens
comprising 84 serum and 52 CSF samples were tested by in-house dipstick
ELISA, Pan-Bio IgM capture ELISA (Pan-Bio, Australia) and JEV CheX IgM
capture ELISA (XCyton, India). Results: The overall agreement among all
three tests was found to be 92% with both serum and cerebrospinal fluid
(CSF) samples. The sensitivity of the dipstick ELISA was found to be
91% with serum and 89% with CSF samples respectively. The specificity
of the dipstick ELISA with reference to both commercial assays was
found to be 100% in serum and CSF samples in this study. Conclusions:
The in-house dipstick ELISA with its comparable sensitivity and
specificity can be used as a promising test in field conditions since
it is simple, rapid and requires no specialized equipment
