{"doi":"10.3390/v16020235","title":"Detection of Chikungunya Virus RNA in Oral Fluid and Urine: An Alternative Approach to Diagnosis?","abstract":"To evaluate whether oral fluids (OF) and urine can serve as alternative, non-invasive samples to diagnose chikungunya virus (CHIKV) infection via RT-qPCR, we employed the same RNA extraction and RT-qPCR protocols on paired serum, OF and urine samples collected from 51 patients with chikungunya during the acute phase of the illness. Chikungunya patients were confirmed through RT-qPCR in acute-phase sera (N = 19), IgM seroconversion between acute- and convalescent-phase sera (N = 12), or IgM detection in acute-phase sera (N = 20). The controls included paired serum, OF and urine samples from patients with non-arbovirus acute febrile illness (N = 28) and RT-PCR-confirmed dengue (N = 16). Nine (47%) of the patients with positive RT-qPCR for CHIKV in sera and two (17%) of those with CHIKV infection confirmed solely via IgM seroconversion had OF positive for CHIKV in RT-qPCR. One (5%) patient with CHIKV infection confirmed via serum RT-qPCR was positive in the RT-qPCR performed on urine. None of the negative control group samples were positive. Although OF may serve as an alternative sample for diagnosing acute chikungunya in specific settings, a negative result cannot rule out an infection. Further research is needed to investigate whether OF and urine collected later in the disease course when serum becomes RT-qPCR-negative may be helpful in CHIKV diagnosis and surveillance, as well as to determine whether urine and OF pose any risk of CHIKV transmission.","journal":"Viruses","year":2024,"id":441858,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":8,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9368,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":478516,"name":"Moyra Machado Portilho","orcid":"0000-0002-4316-4799","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":478514,"name":"Rosângela O. Anjos","orcid":"0000-0003-3809-5335","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":479831,"name":"Patrícia S S Moreira","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":328796,"name":"Christine Stauber","orcid":"0000-0002-2226-0976","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":105319,"name":"Scott C. Weaver","orcid":"0000-0001-8016-8556","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":321437,"name":"Uriel Kitron","orcid":"0000-0003-0493-2043","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":383929,"name":"Mitermayer Galvão dos Reis","orcid":"0000-0002-3051-9060","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":321434,"name":"Guilherme S. Ribeiro","orcid":"0000-0002-6798-2059","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1095063,"name":"Leile Camila Jacob-Nascimento","orcid":"0000-0002-1324-6187","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":42,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:01:11.152920Z","pmid":"38400011","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}