title: Fiber-optic immunosensor for detection of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever IgG antibodies in patients.
abstract: Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) is a severe viral disease with high fatality rate. CCHF virus is endemic in parts of Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and southeastern Europe. Rapid diagnostics of CCHF is vital for appropriate clinical management and prevention of secondary spread from human-to-human. Currently, diagnostics relies on real-time RT-PCR and antibody or antigen detection using ELISA. These methods require trained personnel and expensive equipment and are not appropriate for point-of-care (POC) diagnostics. Furthermore, there are no POC assays available for CCHF. We developed a fiber-optic biosensor for the detection of CCHF IgG antibodies. In order to improve sensitivity, we optimized both the bioreceptor immobilization protocol and the chemiluminescence substrate formulation. The resulting protocol showed a 100-fold greater sensitivity for detection of CCHF antibodies. Finally, we evaluated the fiber-optic biosensor with two CCHF patient sera. We showed that the fiber-optic biosensor is 10-times more sensitive than colorimetric ELISA and is able to detect both patients with high and low levels of IgG antibodies. We believe that the fiber-optic biosensor is a suitable alternative to ELISA as it is much more sensitive and makes it possible to detect a small amount of antibodies at an early stage of infection and can be integrated as a point-of-care diagnostic system of CCHF.
authors.affiliation: †Department of Environmental Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.
authors.forename: Fairoz
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Algaar
authors.affiliation: ‡Department of Biotechnology Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.|§School of Material Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technology University, Nanyang Avenue, 639798, Singapore.
authors.forename: Evgeni
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Eltzov
authors.affiliation: ∥Department of Chemistry, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119991 Moscow, Russia.
authors.forename: Marina M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Vdovenko
authors.affiliation: ∥Department of Chemistry, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119991 Moscow, Russia.
authors.forename: Ivan Yu
authors.initials: IY
authors.lastname: Sakharov
authors.affiliation: §School of Material Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technology University, Nanyang Avenue, 639798, Singapore.
authors.forename: Luka
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Fajs
authors.affiliation: ⊥Institute of Aquaculture, University of Stirling, Stirling, United Kingdom.
authors.forename: Manfred
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Weidmann
authors.affiliation: #Public Health Agency of Sweden, Stockholm, Sweden.|○Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mirazimi
authors.affiliation: †Department of Environmental Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.|‡Department of Biotechnology Engineering, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.|§School of Material Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technology University, Nanyang Avenue, 639798, Singapore.|+National Institute of Biotechnology in the Negev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.|$The Ilse Katz Center for Meso and Nanoscale Science and Technology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
authors.forename: Robert S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Marks
mesh_terms: D000914:Antibodies, Viral / Q000097:blood*; D015374:Biosensing Techniques / Q000379:methods*; D003225:Hemorrhagic Fever Virus, Crimean-Congo / Q000276:immunology*; D006479:Hemorrhagic Fever, Crimean / Q000175:diagnosis*; D006801:Humans; D057230:Limit of Detection; D013997:Time Factors
chemical_list: D000914:Antibodies, Viral