Results
We evaluated the biochemical profile of serum samples, from 86 CHIKV viremic patients, confirmed by qRT-PCR, which also presented headache, fever, severe joint pains, myalgia, and rash. As shown in Table 1, the biochemical profiles obtained indicated: (i) an elevation of creatinine in 54/86 (63%) patients, (ii) AST was altered in 37/87 (29%) patients, (iii) ALT was elevated in 6/86 (7%) patients, (iv) high urea was observed in 11/86 (13%) patients and, (v) 31/87 (36%) patients presented high levels of uric acid. Table 1 shows a correlation between symptoms and hepatic lesion indicators. The correlations were obtained with 85 samples for the dosage of ALT, since one sample had insufficient volume to dose AST. For fever, we had a 77, because nine patients did not provide reliable answers. Thirty one percent of 86 patients half alterations on AST levels and 7 % patients (n= 86) presented alterations in ALT. The correlation of the AST/ALT with symptoms did not show statistical significance. Table 2 shows that 13% (n=86) of the patients had alterations in urea, 36% (n=86) had alterations in uric acid and 63% (n=86) with alterations in creatinine. We also observed statistical significance on the correlation of renal markers with creatinine, myalgia and uric acid with asthenia. Moreover, we also found significant correlation between vomiting and hemorrhagic signs. From a clinical standpoint, the correlation of creatinine with myalgia can be relevant, but the uric acid and symptoms correlations did not appear to have clinical relevance.
Figure shows the distribution between of the biochemical test results, and viral Ct. We chose to use a Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to evaluate the significance of correlations based on the differences between distributions, because box plots were suggestive of differences in the distributions of Cts when comparing infected patients, with and without alterations in enzymatic levels and, because Cts indicate viral load variations in logarithmic space.