Abstract:
Zika viral disease is caused by an infection with the Zika virus (ZIKV) which
is primarily transmitted to people though the bite of an infected Aedes aegypti msquito.
Zika virus can survive in the infected person for several months. Zika viral infection
during pregnancy is a cause of congenital brain abnormality,which caused stillborn
including microcephaly. It also causes severe symptoms in the patients with the
Gillong-Barre syndrome. Currently, the detection of ZIKV using real time PCR
technique has some limitations. As a result, the treatment and control of ZIKV
epidemic are delayed. Lab-Chip technology is a new and faster method for ZIKV
detection. In this study the performance of Lab-Chip real time RT-PCR was evaluated
and compared to real time RT-PCR reference method. In this study, 232 suspected
ZIKV cases were evaluated by Lab-Chip real time RT-PCR. The results showed that
the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value
(NPV), accuracy, Likelihood Ratios for positive test (LR+), Likelihood Ratios for
negative test (LR-), and Diagnostic odds ratio (DOR) of this technique were 95.78%,
97.08%, 95.78%, 97.08%, 96.55%, 32.80, 0.0434 and 820, respectively. The limit of
detection of this method was 125 cp/ml. In addition, when using Lab-Chip real time
RT-PCR for determination of ZIKV in other viral infected samples such as
Adenovirus, Epstein Bar virus, Herpes simplex virus, Varicella zoster, Enterovirus,
Human metapneumovirus, Influenza B, and Coronavirus, cross-reactivity was not
found.
It is concluded that the Lab-Chip real time RT-PCR technique shows high
sensitivity and specificity and less time consuming for ZIKV detection.