Japanese firm develops test kit for dengue

A biomedical venture firm in Japan has developed a new test kit to diagnose dengue in short time, which is likely to help prevent further spread of dengue infection.

The Chiba city-based Biomedical Research Institute Co.Ltd. Monday announced that it has developed a dengue detecting kit named RapiDeng Ag, which has a 10 cm-long test strip containing dengue antibody and is priced at about 1,000 yen (about $9.32), Xinhua reported.

Like early pregnancy test paper, the dengue test strip adopts immunochromatography, only requiring a few drops of blood dripping onto the test strip. If the result is positive, a red line will appear after about 10 minutes. The accuracy is as high as 90 percent.

Rapid and accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment are the first step to prevent expansion of dengue infection, said the director of the institute.

The current main method to diagnose dengue is polymerase chain reaction (PCR), which is used to amplify a specific region of a DNA strand (the DNA target). With an accuracy of nearly 100 percent, the PCR costs 10,000 yen (about $93.25) and need several days to get a result.

The number of reported cases of dengue is increasing in Japan and had reached 116 by Monday.