Serodiagnosis of asymptomatic dengue infection

Dengue virus (DENV) is a mosquito-transmitted virus that is expanding across the world. The incidence of dengue infection, especially severe disease, has been increasing. DENV consist of 4 serotypes of single stranded RNA viruses (D1-D4) in the genus Flavivirus, family Flaviviridae. Majority of dengue infections are asymptomatic cases, which cause difficulty in disease control and are important in dengue surveillance. There is still no gold standard to diagnose asymptomatic dengue infection. Plaque reduction neutralization test (PRNT) has been developed for many purposes such as immunological study, clinical study, vaccine trial and is currently the most sensitive and specific method for serological surveillance. However, PRNT shows some degree of cross reaction among different dengue serotypes especially secondary dengue infection cases and to other flaviviruses. Moreover, various modification since the beginning make PRNT lack of inter-laboratory standardization which is an important issue. This paper discusses the important of asymptomatic dengue infection and its diagnostic method.