Clinical Features and Molecular Diagnosis of Chikungunya Fever from South India

An epidemic of Chikungunya fever of unprecedented magnitude occurred in many parts of India in early 2006 after an interval of 33 years, and there has been a resurgence in some parts of South India since June 2007. The article highlights clinical manifestations of infection and various molecular tests that were used for diagnoses of Chikungunya virus infection. Of particular interest is the real-time loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT LAMP) assay, which is rapid and cost-effective and can be adopted at ill-equipped laboratories. Clinical symptoms were characterized by a triad of fever, rash, and severe rheumatic manifestations. RT LAMP identified 20 additional Chikungunya virus-positive cases, compared with reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. Chikungunya virus was isolated from 20 randomly selected samples. Genotyping of the virus isolates revealed that the East Central South African genotype of Chikungunya virus was the etiologic agent of this epidemic. Molecular diagnosis is an important tool to identify such new vectorborne viral illnesses.