Background: Serological assays are widely used to confirm dengue virus infections and to differentiate between a primary and a secondary infection.
Objective: Two commercial dengue diagnostic kits, Panbio Dengue IgM Capture and Dengue IgG Capture ELISA (Brisbane, Australia) were evaluated.
Study design: Three hundred and seventy-three serum samples were tested. Panel sera included samples from dengue confirmed cases (representing both primary and secondary infections), from non-dengue infectious diseases, and from healthy individuals. The MAC-ELISA/Dengue IPK was used for the detection of anti-dengue virus IgM antibody in the sera and the ELISA inhibition method (EIM/Dengue IPK) was used to differentiate between primary and secondary infections. Both these reference assays, which were previously developed in the Arbovirus Laboratory at the "Pedro Kouri" Tropical Medicine Institute, were employed as the gold standard.
Results: High sensitivity (96.8%) and specificity (99.4%) were found with the commercial diagnostics when compared to the reference methods. Furthermore, high concordance 95.5% in classifying dengue infection types (primary or secondary infections) was observed.
Conclusions: The Panbio Dengue IgM and IgG assays offer a good alternative for dengue diagnosis. They are easy to perform and results can be obtained in less than 3h.