Evaluation of the diagnostic accuracy of a new dengue IgA capture assay (Platelia Dengue IgA Capture, Bio-Rad) for dengue infection detection.

• Main Authors: Sophie De Decker, Muriel Vray, Viridiana Sistek, Bhety Labeau, Antoine Enfissi, Dominique Rousset, Séverine Matheus
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2015-03-01
• Series: PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases
• Online Access: http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC4372552?pdf=render
• ISSN: 1935-2727; 1935-2735

Considering the short lifetime of IgA antibodies in serum and the key advantages of antibody detection ELISAs in terms of sensitivity and specificity, Bio-Rad has just developed a new ELISA test based on the detection of specific anti-dengue IgA. This study has been carried out to assess the performance of this Platelia Dengue IgA Capture assay for dengue infection detection. A total of 184 well-characterized samples provided by the French Guiana NRC sera collection (Laboratory of Virology, Institut Pasteur in French Guiana) were selected among samples collected between 2002 and 2013 from patients exhibiting a dengue-like syndrome. A first group included 134 sera from confirmed dengue-infected patients, and a second included 50 sera from non-dengue infected patients, all collected between day 3 and day 15 after the onset of fever. Dengue infection diagnoses were all confirmed using reference assays by direct virological identification using RT-PCR or virus culture on acute sera samples or on paired acute-phase sera samples of selected convalescent sera. This study revealed: i) a good overall sensitivity and specificity of the IgA index test, i.e., 93% and 88% respectively, indicating its good correlation to acute dengue diagnosis; and ii) a good concordance with the Panbio IgM capture ELISA. Because of the shorter persistence of dengue virus-specific IgA than IgM, these results underlined the relevance of this new test, which could significantly improve dengue diagnosis accuracy, especially in countries where dengue virus is (hyper-) endemic. It would allow for additional refinement of dengue diagnostic strategy.