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.