Recent Progress in the Development of Diagnostic Tests for Malaria

Abstract

The impact of malaria on global health has continually prompted the need to develop effective diagnostic strategies. In malaria endemic regions, routine diagnosis is hampered by technical and infrastructural challenges to laboratories. These laboratories lack standard facilities, expertise or diagnostic supplies; thus, therapy is administered based on clinical or self-diagnosis. There is the need for accurate diagnosis of malaria due to the continuous increase in the cost of medication, and the emergence and spread of drug resistant strains. However, the widely utilized Giemsa-stained microscopy and immunochromatographic tests for malaria are liable to several drawbacks, including inadequate sensitivity and false-positive outcomes. Alternative methods that offer improvements in performance are either expensive, have longer turnaround time or require a level of expertise that makes them unsuitable for point-of-care (POC) applications. These gaps necessitate exploration of more efficient detection techniques with the potential of POC applications, especially in resource-limited settings. This minireview discusses some of the recent trends and new approaches that are seeking to improve the clinical diagnosis of malaria.

Abnormal scattergrams and cell population data generated by fully automated hematological analyzers: New tools for screening malaria infection?

“…Although or microbiology laboratories have been dismissed. [1][2][3][4][5] As the amount of hemozoin produced by Malaria parasites seems to be associated with both immune response and disease severity, In conclusion, the results of our study enable suggesting the following screening algorithm:…”

“…The diagnosis of Malaria was made by microscopic examination of Giemsa stained (Carlo Erba, Italy) peripheral thick and thin blood smear as currently recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) . The immunochromatographic testing was performed on fresh blood samples by Core malaria Pan/Pv/Pf test (CORE Diagnostic, Birmingham, UK) according to the manufacturer's instructions.…”

“…Optical microscopy (with Giemsa stain) remains the gold standard for diagnosing Malaria. More recently, rapid tests (based on immune‐chromatographic or molecular techniques) with acceptable sensitivity and specificity have become available to improve the diagnosis of this life‐threatening condition …”

“…More recently, rapid tests (based on immune-chromatographic or molecular techniques) with acceptable sensitivity and specificity have become available to improve the diagnosis of this life-threatening condition. 3,4 Notwithstanding the widespread availability of specific external quality assessment programs (EQAs), the low incidence of new diagnoses in Western countries does not allow to maintain a satisfactory degree of expertise for identifying Malaria parasites with microscopic revision of blood smears, so that screening techniques for a targeted microscopic review may be necessary for enabling an early and accurate diagnosis of this infection, especially in nonendemic countries. 3 Recent evidence attests that the latest generation of hematological analyzers may be a valid support for the screening of patients with suspected Malaria, [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15] although the diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of abnormal findings were found to be strictly dependent on the instrumentation, the parasitic index, and the stage of Plasmodium maturation.…”

Quantitative and rapid Plasmodium falciparum malaria diagnosis and artemisinin-resistance detection using a CMOS Lab-on-Chip platform

“…Specifically, cellular-based methods such as microscopy, are commonly used for pathogen identification, but require high expertise and expensive equipment thus limited to centralized facilities [3][4][5][6][7]. Conversely, most reported protein-based methods rely on antigen-antibody detection and are typically combined with paperbased diagnostics such as lateral flow assays (LFAs) [8][9][10]. Even though they report results within 10 to 20 min, they commonly suffer from low sensitivity or low specificity for clinical applications.…”