title: Mass scale screening of common arboviral infections by an affordable, cost effective RT-PCR method.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To develop a rapid, cost effective RT-PCR method for the mass scale diagnosis of such diseases at the viremia stage to find out the actual disease burden in that area.
  
  
  METHODS
  For this purpose, cases with the history of only short febrile illness were considered. Thus 157 samples with the history of dengue/chikungunya like illness and only 58 samples with a history of acute encephalitis syndrome (AES) were selected.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Out of 157 samples, 42 and 74 were detected as dengue and chikungunya, respectively and out of 58 AES cases only 23 could be detected as Japanese encephalitis by this RT-PCR method.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This cost effective RT-PCR method can detect the total positive cases that remain undetected by ELISA method. Moreover, this method is capable to detect the viral RNA from patients' sera even after the appearance of IgM antibody at one fifth costs as compared with the other commercially available kits.
authors.affiliation: Indian Council of Medical Research Virus Unit, Kolkata.
authors.forename: Debjani
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Taraphdar
authors.forename: Arindam
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sarkar
authors.forename: Shyamalendu
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chatterjee
mesh_terms: D000914:Antibodies, Viral / Q000097:blood; D001102:Arbovirus Infections / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000821:virology; D001103:Arboviruses / Q000235:genetics*; D065632:Chikungunya Fever / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000821:virology; D003715:Dengue / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000821:virology; D004664:Encephalitis Virus, Japanese / Q000235:genetics; D004672:Encephalitis, Japanese / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000821:virology; D005334:Fever / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000821:virology; D006801:Humans; D007075:Immunoglobulin M / Q000097:blood; D008403:Mass Screening; D012367:RNA, Viral / Q000097:blood*; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction / Q000191:economics / Q000379:methods*; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014766:Viremia / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000821:virology
chemical_list: D000914:Antibodies, Viral; D007075:Immunoglobulin M; D012367:RNA, Viral
keywords: Arbovirus; Cost effective RT-PCR method; Mass screening