Advances in Diagnosis, Surveillance, and Monitoring of Zika Virus: An Update

Raj K. Singh, Kuldeep Dhama, Kumaragurubaran Karthik, Ruchi Tiwari, Rekha Khandia, Ashok Munjal, Hafiz M. N. Iqbal, Yashpal S. Malik, Rubén Bueno-Marí

Zika virus (ZIKV) is associated with numerous human health-related disorders, including fetal microcephaly, neurological signs, and autoimmune disorders such as Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). Perceiving the ZIKA associated losses, in 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared it as a global public health emergency. In consequence, an upsurge in the research on ZIKV was seen around the globe, with significant attainments over developing several effective diagnostics, drugs, therapies, and vaccines countering this life-threatening virus at an early step. State-of-art tools developed led the researchers to explore virus at the molecular level, and in-depth epidemiological investigations to understand the reason for increased pathogenicity and different clinical manifestations. These days, ZIKV infection is diagnosed based on clinical manifestations, along with serological and molecular detection tools. As, isolation of ZIKV is a tedious task; molecular assays such as reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), real-time qRT-PCR, loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP), lateral flow assays (LFAs), biosensors, nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) tests, strand invasion-based amplification tests and immune assays like enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) are in-use to ascertain the ZIKV infection or Zika fever. Herein, this review highlights the recent advances in the diagnosis, surveillance, and monitoring of ZIKV. These new insights gained from the recent advances can aid in the rapid and definitive detection of this virus and/or Zika fever. The summarized information will aid the strategies to design and adopt effective prevention and control strategies to counter this viral pathogen of great public health concern.