The Validity of FOKUS Dengue IgG/IgM Card Device as Diagnostic Tool for Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever

As WHO recommendation, diagnosis of dengue virus infection is best based on clinically symptom according to WHO criteria and confirmed by HI test to detect and differentiate primary and secondary dengue virus infection. HI test used two blood samples (from acute and convalescence phase). When the convalescence phase titer shows 4 times greater than acute phase, it concludes positive case. Therefore, this test was time consuming; the patients get the confirmation at least on the 7th day of illness. Recently, many rapid test kits based on immunochromatography principle are now commercially available. One of them is FOKUS Dengue IgG/IgM Card Device. This kit could detect antibodies to dengue virus in human whole blood, serum or plasma within 5 to 30 minutes. In order to get alternative diagnosis for dengue virus infection, we compared FOKUS Dengue IgG/IgM Card Device with HI test. The sensitivity for diagnosing dengue virus infection in acute phase were 98,20%; 98,20%; 88,20% respectively for Den-1, Den-2 and Den- 3 serotype. The accuracy for diagnosing dengue virus infection in acute phase were 85,80%; 78,8%; 63,60% respectively for Den-1, Den-2 and Den-3 serotype; all that result were statistically valid at the confidence level of 5%. The results indicate that FOKUS dengue IgG/IgM card showed a good sensitivity to identify virus infection of Den-1, Den-2, and Den-3 serotype. It also showed a good accuracy for Den-1 and Den-2 serotype. Keywords: dengue, diagnostic tests, IgG, IgM