Two-Color Lateral Flow Assay for Multiplex Detection of Causative Agents Behind Acute Febrile Illnesses

Acute undifferentiated febrile illnesses (AFIs) represent a significant health burden worldwide. AFIs can be caused by infection with a number of different pathogens including dengue (DENV) and Chikungunya viruses (CHIKV), and their differential diagnosis is critical to the proper patient management. While rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) for the detection of IgG/IgM against a single pathogen have played a significant role in enabling the rapid diagnosis in the point-of-care settings, the state-of-the-art assay scheme is incompatible with the multiplex detection of IgG/IgM to more than one pathogen. In this paper, we present a novel assay scheme that uses two-color latex labels for rapid multiplex detection of IgG/IgM. Adapting this assay scheme, we show that 4-plex detection of the IgG/IgM antibodies to DENV and CHIKV is possible in 10 min by using it to correctly identify 12 different diagnostic scenarios. We also show that blue, mixed, and red colorimetric signals corresponding to IgG, IgG/IgM, and IgM positive cases, respectively, can be associated with distinct ranges of hue intensities, which could be exploited by analyzer systems in the future for making accurate, automated diagnosis. This represents the first steps toward the development of a single RDT-based system for the differential diagnosis of numerous AFIs of interest.