Re-emergence and global expansion of Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) from Africa to Indian Subcontinent in 2013, has significantly resulted in chronic morbidities in infected individuals. The burden of CHIKV on human population is still uncertain, owing to lack of vaccine and underdiagnosis. Due to the absence of vaccine or antiviral therapeutics, timely diagnosis and detection of CHIKV is vital for minimizing virus transmission. Commercially available diagnostic and titration kits relies on the traditional methods such as real-time PCR (RT-PCR), serodiagnostic assays, and plaque assay, which are expensive, time-consuming and technically challenging. To overcome these limitations and to increase the diagnostic coverage of CHIKV infections, a rapid and economical antigen capture assay has been developed in this study for serological diagnosis of CHIKV, using tamarind chitinase (chi)-like lectin (TCLL). TCLL extracted and purified from tamarind seeds (Tamarindus indica), has been reported recently to bind to N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) containing glycan on the envelope protein of virus. Evaluation of antigen capture assay for serological diagnosis of CHIKV signified that the developed assay is able to detect CHIKV in both laboratory and clinical samples efficiently. Furthermore, a standard graph using different concentrations of CHIKV has been established using samples with known virus titer, to assist in quantification of viral load in a given sample. The feasibility of antigen capture assay for broad-spectrum diagnosis of alphaviral infections was evaluated using Sindbis virus (SINV) belonging to the same alphavirus genus, and the results obtained were in agreement with those of CHIKV. In summary, the developed glycan-based virus capture assay can be potentially applied as point-of-care routine diagnostic and titration assay for CHIKV as well for other re-emerging alphaviral infections.

2013 年，基孔肯雅病毒 (CHIKV) 从非洲重新出现并在全球范围内蔓延到印度次大陆，严重导致受感染者出现慢性病。由于缺乏疫苗和诊断不足，CHIKV 对人群的负担仍然不确定。由于缺乏疫苗或抗病毒疗法，及时诊断和检测 CHIKV 对于最大限度地减少病毒传播至关重要。市售的诊断和滴定试剂盒依赖于传统方法，例如实时荧光定量 PCR (RT-PCR)、血清诊断测定和噬菌斑测定，这些方法昂贵、耗时且技术上具有挑战性。为了克服这些限制并增加 CHIKV 感染的诊断覆盖率，本研究开发了一种快速且经济的抗原捕获试验，用于 CHIKV 的血清学诊断，使用罗望子几丁质酶 (chi) 样凝集素 (TCLL)。从罗望子种子中提取纯化的 TCLL (罗望子)，最近有报道与病毒包膜蛋白上含有聚糖的 N-乙酰氨基葡萄糖 (GlcNAc) 结合。对用于 CHIKV 血清学诊断的抗原捕获试验的评估表明，所开发的试验能够有效地检测实验室和临床样本中的 CHIKV。此外，已使用具有已知病毒滴度的样本建立了使用不同浓度 CHIKV 的标准图，以帮助量化给定样本中的病毒载量。使用属于同一甲病毒属的辛德毕斯病毒（SINV）评估抗原捕获测定法用于甲病毒感染广谱诊断的可行性，所得结果与CHIKV结果一致。总之，