NS1: An early Diagnostic Tool for Dengue Virus Fever

Abstract

Dengue virus is a highly prevailing unremitting pathological menace in the developing countries like Pakistan. The variation in the type and frequency of dengue infection demands a continuous surveillance on its spread and diagnosis, in order to develop appropriate management and therapeutic strategies. Dengue Virus is highly complex disease with various manifestations. It is hard to characterize the dengue viral infection with ordinary laboratory tests. However, NS1 could serve a good diagnostic tool in the first few days of fever. In this research, 88 patients from Lahore regions of Punjab were analysed for the presence of dengue specific NS1 antigen from 1 to 30 days of dengue fever. ELISA based kit was employed. The obtained data was analysed expressed percentage frequency of NS1 positive and negative along with IgM positive and negative in all dengue fever patients. Importantly it was observed that 36.3 % were infected by dengue. NS1 antigen was efficiently quantified at earlier days of infection. IgM was negative in all the subjects who were positive for NS1 on the second day of fever. However, this association weakened with the progression of fever. It was analysed that thrombocytopenia and leuckocytopenia are not linked with the NS1 positivity and these states were random. It can be inferred that dengue diagnosis is very complicated and the antigenic profile dramatically changes with the progression of fever in terms of days. Clinicians should employ a diagnostic method based on a comprehensive analysis of subjects in order to minimize