DIAGNOSTIC DEVELOPMENT

Serologic determination of arbovirus infection status is critical to many public health activities. Because a large proportion of arbovirus infections cause mild or no symptoms (inapparent infections), detection of antibodies elicited by prior infections is often the only option for determining prevalence and incidence of these pathogens in a population. However, the diagnosis of arbovirus infections, particularly closely related flavivirus can be complicated by serologic cross-reactivity. Our two-pronged approach involves 1) implementing existing methods for serologically detecting arbovirus infection in the most effective way possible to answer epidemiologic questions (see Applied Epidemiology) while 2) simultaneously working to develop improved serodiagnostic assays.