Evaluation of chikungunya virus infection in children from India during 2009–2010: A cross sectional observational study

Abstract

Chikungunya virus, a small (about 60-70 nm diameter), spherical, enveloped, positive, single stranded RNA virus is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes. After a short period of incubation (3-5 days) symptoms like fever with joint pains and others start appearing. After a gap of 20 years, this virus re-emerged during 2006-2008 in India causing a major outbreak of CHIKV in India. This study was conducted subsequent to the major outbreak in order to evaluate the proportion of chikungunya virus infection in children with suggestive symptoms at three geographical locations of India. Lineage of circulating strains and changes in the E1 structural polypeptide were also determined. Blood samples were collected (in Sodium citrate vacutainer tubes) during 1st June 2009 to 31st May 2010 from children (age 0 ≤ 18 years) suspected to have chikungunya infection, that is, those who presented with sudden onset of fever and/or joint pain, myalgia, and headache from three regions of India, All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi, Karnataka Institute of Medical Sciences (KIMS) in Hubli and Sawai Mansingh Medical College (SMS) in Jaipur. Detection of CHIKV antibodies in all acute-phase patient plasma samples was done by IgM ELISA and for samples within ≤5 days of fever, a one-step RT-PCR was carried out on a block thermo-cycler targeting 294 bp region of E1 gene that codes for the viral envelope protein. Comparison of nucleotide and amino acid sequences from few positive samples of two regions was done with African S-27 reference strain using BioEdit. A phylogenetic tree was constructed using MEGA 6 by using the Maximum Likelihood method based on the Kimura 2-parameter model. Out of the 723 acute phase samples tested from three geographical locations of India, Chikungunya virus infection was detected in 249/723 (34.44%) subjects by either IgM Elisa (180/723) or RT-PCR (69/412). RT-PCR was employed in samples collected from children with ≤5 days of fever. Maximum positive cases were from KIMS center, Hubli. Seasonally, positivity varied with number of enrolled cases at KIMS and SMS. Joint pain was significantly associated with CHIKV positivity (P = 0.0156). Presence/absence of certain clinical features varied with age (P < 0.05). Sequence analysis revealed four amino acid changes. Phylogenetic analysis with partial sequences of E1 gene from KIMS (n = 12) and SMS (n = 5) showed that the study isolates clustered with Indian Ocean Lineage strains (IOL) of East, Central and South African (ECSA) type. Evaluation of chikungunya virus infection in children from India during 2009-2010 showed high proportion of CHIKV infection in Southern region of India compared to Northern region. The circulating CHIKV strains were of Indian Ocean Lineage (IOL) group within the East, Central, and South African (ECSA) genotype. However few amino acid changes were observed in E1 polypeptide with reference to African strain S-27 (AF369024). Further studies are needed to know the implications of these changes in vector-pathogen compatibility and...

Clinical and laboratory profiles of children with severe chikungunya infection

“…Nonetheless, studies on pediatric cases of severe chikungunya fever resulting in hospitalization are limited. In contrast to other studies 7 , differences between infants and adolescents were not determined in our study, which could be relevant because a study in India showed distinct clinical manifestations in infants and older children 8 .…”

“…A vesicular-bullous rash was commonly observed, primarily in children aged <6 months but also in older patients (e.g., patient 2, aged 13 years). Unlike the adult population, pediatric patients appear to exhibit severe dermatological manifestations [6][7][8][9] . Robin et al reported that 13 children aged <6 months who were hospitalized for chikungunya fever presented with severe vesicular-bullous rash 10 .…”

Chikungunya infection in infants

“…18 Furthermore, a multicenter study in India in the period of June 2009 to May 2010, verified significant differences in clinical manifestations (exanthema, headache, arthralgia/arthritis, vomiting and irritability) among children aged eight to 18 years, when comparing infants under the age of eight. 19 The clinical findings of this present study were fever and cutaneous manifestations (in all cases), followed by irritability, arthralgias/arthritis and vomiting, while the laboratorial tests had high frequency of anemia, alterations in the leukogram, increased cellularity in LCR and the aminotransferases. The involvement of the multisystemic chikungunya infection in infants, with predominance of the cutaneous tissue whose pathogenesis is still not well understood.…”

Virus load and clinical features during the acute phase of Chikungunya infection in children

“…Increased transport activities supported the transmission of the virus and number of cases are getting registered due to infected travellers all over the world [15,16]. Multicentre surveillance studies are the most effective way to estimate the magnitude of the disease burden at different geographic locations and to evaluate the transmission dynamics of Chikungunya infection [1,17]. Though Chikungunya is a self-limiting disease, severe manifestations like persistent arthralgia and myalgia may increase the duration of illness [18].…”