ATR-FTIR spectroscopy with chemometric algorithms of multivariate classification in the discrimination between healthy vs. dengue vs. chikungunya vs. zika clinical samples

Abstract

Dengue, zika and chikungunya are arboviruses transmitted by mosquitoes of genus Aedes. In clinical diagnostic routines, cross reactions between dengue and zika may occur because they are viruses of the same family (Flaviviridae); on the other hand, chikungunya is an alphavirus. In this study we suggest the use of FTIR spectroscopy in conjunction with PCA-LDA, SPA-LDA and GA-LDA multivariate classification algorithms as a tool sensitive to biochemical variations caused by the presence of different viruses in the blood. We used 45 blood samples from patients diagnosed with dengue, 30 blood samples from patients diagnosed with zika, 10 samples from patients diagnosed with chikungunya and 45 blood samples from people without these viruses. The objective of the study was to evaluate, mainly, the specificity of the technique in discriminating the blood samples based only on the presence or absence of different viruses and to compare it with some standard diagnostic methods. The results showed sensitivity and specificity values of 100% for the healthy, dengue and chikungunya classes and values close to 90% for zika, suggesting that spectroscopic techniques have great potential for detecting the biochemical variations that the presence of the virus causes in the blood, through a fast methodology.