A Short Communication on Detection of the Dengue Virus Using Gold Nanoparticles

Abstract

Recently, our group published a paper describing the detection of the dengue virus using nanoparticles conjugated to antibodies. The article presents itself in a useful, interesting and comprehensive way as a potential diagnostic tool for patients. In this brief commentary, we extend our contributions, focusing on the hidden challenges and proposing solutions to some of your problems encountered, in addition to highlighting all the efficiency of this new methodology. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), more than 1 billion people in the world are affected by a set of diseases called neglected, which mainly affect poor populations living in tropical and subtropical developing countries [1]. Among these diseases, we have dengue [2]. Dengue is an infectious viral disease that has four serotypes (DENV 1-4). The transmission of the virus occurs through the bite of female mosquitoes of the genus Aedes, mainly A. aegypti. This mosquito is the same vector as Chikungunya, Yellow Fever and Zika virus. In Brazil, dengue is endemic throughout the national territory, with 247,393 cases notified in 2018, 1,544,987 in 2019 and 987,173 in 2020 [3]. We are the fifth largest country in the world in territorial extension, with many regions of native forest, where access occurs mainly by boats, causing a greater difficulty for an effective and simple diagnosis for dengue. The disease presents the following symptoms such as high fever, muscle and joint pain, headache, skin blemishes, pain in the back of the eye, characteristic rash, nausea, vomiting and in some cases, it can occur an evolution of the disease starting a more serious condition, called hemorrhagic dengue. Diagnosing dengue fever can be difficult because its signs and symptoms can be easily confused with those of other diseases such as Chikungunya, Zika virus, Malaria and Typhoid fever, which can result in misdiagnosis for the patient [2,3].