An easy-to-use point-of-care Fluorescence-based System for RNA-based Detection of Dengue directly from Serum Samples

Our methodology does not involve any time-consuming RNA extraction or nucleic acid amplification step. It is a rapid method of detection of dengue virus directly from patient’s serum. It gives results in about two hours. It is also advantageous over other methods as it gives a semi-quantitative estimation of dengue virus load in patient’s serum by comparison with known standards (in addition to dengue detection/diagnosis).

This method can supplement current methods of early dengue detection. Our method is more flexible and can be easily modified based on emerging dengue serotypes, compared to updating currently available ELISAs. Changing the probe sequence to match a given target sequence is easier and more economic and so our method can be adapted for rapid diagnosis of any target pathogen, in body fluids.

Present invention has higher specificity for dengue detection as it does not carry the risk of non-specific amplification often associated with NASBA-based diagnosis. It is an easy-to-use method and does not need much expertise to perform the experiments.