What is Dengue? How Does the Dengue IgG/IgM/NS1 Combo Rapid Test Kit Work?
Affecting around 400 million people every year, dengue is one of the prominent public health concerns across tropical and subtropical regions of the world. With the rapid increase in the global incidence of dengue, infection is a growing cause of severe disease and death. Moreover, as many dengue infections are asymptomatic, mild, or manageable without medical assistance, it is difficult to determine the exact burden of dengue on human well-being. Furthermore, many dengue infections are misdiagnosed as other febrile diseases, such as malaria, influenza, zika, and leptospirosis. Thus, timely detection and differentiation of dengue infections are important to medical professionals worldwide. With the recent advancements in diagnostics, various diagnostic tests have become available to diagnose dengue. Rapid detection technologies such as antigen-based and antibody-based lateral flow assays have quickly gained popularity due to their unique benefits for case management, surveillance, and public health purposes. Read along to learn more about the dengue virus and how it is detected by the Dengue IgG/IgM/NS1 Combo Rapid Test Kit.
What causes dengue?
A mosquito-borne single positive-stranded RNA virus of the Flavivirus genus in the family Flaviviridae causes dengue fever. Dengue virus (DENV) has four major serotypes, which are denoted DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3, and DENV-4. Although another reported serotype of the virus, DENV-5, has recently been reported, it is yet to be confirmed. Due to the limits of cross-immunity among these serotypes, the infected individuals only develop a short-term immunity against other serotypes following their recovery from infection with a particular dengue serotype and remain susceptible to complications linked to subsequent infections. All dengue virus serotypes are transmitted primarily by female mosquitoes of the Aedes genus, which are also vectors of chikungunya, yellow fever, and Zika viruses.
How does dengue transmit?
Dengue viruses spread through the bite of infected female mosquitoes of the Aedes species, especially Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus. Although the life-cycle of dengue viruses had initially involved non-human primates, dengue viruses currently almost exclusively transmit between humans and Aedes mosquitoes today. Human-to-human transmission of dengue viruses has not been documented, with the exception of a few cases of transmission via blood products, transplantations, and transfusions. When an infected mosquito bites a person, dengue viruses migrate from the saliva of the mosquito to the host bloodstream and invade white blood cells. The multiplication of the viruses within the white blood cells produces an immune response in the host body, which may lead to the development of symptoms.
How common is dengue fever?
The World Health Organization reports that dengue fever causes around 400 million cases, with 40,000 deaths yearly. Moreover, the virus has become increasingly widespread throughout recent decades. In fact, dengue fever is currently endemic in more than 100 countries worldwide, whereas it was only observed to cause significant epidemics in 9 countries before 1970. Although Asia alone accounts for more than 70% of all cases, dengue fever remains a common disease in many regions across Central and South America, Southeast Asia, the Caribbeans, and the Pacific Islands.
What are the common symptoms of dengue fever?
Dengue viruses may cause a wide spectrum of diseases ranging from sub-clinical or moderate to severe. In symptomatic patients, symptoms of dengue fever may develop after an incubation period of 4 to 10 days and include high fever together with severe headaches, nausea, vomiting, swollen glands, muscle/joint pain, pain behind the eyes, or a dengue-specific skin rash. Although around 80% of all dengue cases are asymptomatic, mild, or manageable, the infection can occasionally lead to a life-threatening complication called severe dengue. Severe dengue may develop 3 to 7 days following symptom onset and cause severe complications such as blood plasma leakage, fluid accumulation, respiratory distress, severe bleeding, and organ function impairment. Early signs of severe dengue in this critical phase may include abdominal pain, persistent vomiting, rapid/ difficult breathing, severe fatigue, liver enlargement, bleeding gums or nose, and blood in vomit/stool.
How does the Dengue IgG/IgM/NS1 Combo Rapid Test Kit work?
Our Dengue IgG/IgM/NS1 Combo Rapid Test Kit is a chromatographic immunoassay intended for the rapid simultaneous detection of dengue-specific IgG antibodies, IgM antibodies, and NS1 antigens in human serum, plasma, and whole blood samples. The assay is designed in a lateral flow test format containing multiple sets of dengue-specific antigens and antibodies to capture these markers for detecting a current, recent, or past infection. The presence of the NS1 antigen within the tested sample indicates an active infection. Detectable between 7 days to 3 months after exposure to the virus, IgM antibodies indicate a recent infection with dengue. IgG antibodies take longer to develop and disappear. The presence of the IgG antibodies may be linked to long-term immunity against a certain dengue virus serotype.
REFERENCES
Guzman, M. G., Gubler, D. J., Izquierdo, A., Martinez, E., & Halstead, S. B. (2016). Dengue infection. Nature Reviews Disease Primers, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrdp.2016.55
Nanaware, N., Banerjee, A., Bagchi, S. M., Bagchi, P., & Mukherjee, A. (2021). Dengue Virus Infection: A Tale of Viral Exploitations and Host Responses. Viruses, 13(10), 1967. https://doi.org/10.3390/v13101967
Peeling, R. W., Artsob, H., Pelegrino, J. L., Buchy, P., Cardosa, M. J., Devi, S., Enria, D., Farrar, J., Gubler, D. J., Guzmán, M. G., Halstead, S. B., Hunsperger, E., Kliks, S., Margolis, H. S., Nathanson, C. M., Nguyen, V. P., Rizzo, N., Vázquez, S., & Yoksan, S. (2010). Evaluation of diagnostic tests: dengue. Nature Reviews Microbiology, 8(S12), S30–S37. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrmicro2459
