Guo Suqin, He Lishan, Tisch Daniel J, Kazura James, Mharakurwa Sungano, Mahanta Jagadish, Herrera Sócrates, Wang Baomin, Cui Liwang
College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
Present address: College of Agronomy, Guangxi University, 530004 Nanning, China.
Trop Med Health. 2016 May 16;44:15. doi: 10.1186/s41182-016-0015-8. eCollection 2016.
Good-quality artemisinin drugs are essential for malaria treatment, but increasing prevalence of poor-quality artemisinin drugs in many endemic countries hinders effective management of malaria cases.
To develop a point-of-care assay for rapid identification of counterfeit and substandard artemisinin drugs for resource-limited areas, we used specific monoclonal antibodies against artesunate and artemether, and developed prototypes of lateral flow dipstick assays. In this pilot test, we evaluated the feasibility of these dipsticks under different endemic settings and their performance in the hands of untrained personnel.
The results showed that the dipstick tests can be successfully performed by different investigators with the included instruction sheet. None of the artemether and artesunate drugs collected from public pharmacies in different endemic countries failed the test.
It is possible that the simple dipstick assays, with future optimization of test conditions and sensitivity, can be used as a qualitative and semi-quantitative assay for rapid screening of counterfeit artemisinin drugs in endemic settings.
优质青蒿素药物对疟疾治疗至关重要，但许多疟疾流行国家劣质青蒿素药物的流行率不断上升，阻碍了疟疾病例的有效管理。
为开发一种用于资源有限地区快速识别假冒和不合格青蒿素药物的即时检测方法，我们使用了针对青蒿琥酯和蒿甲醚的特异性单克隆抗体，并开发了侧向流动试纸条检测的原型。在这项试点测试中，我们评估了这些试纸条在不同流行环境下的可行性以及未经培训人员操作时的性能。
结果表明，不同研究人员按照附带的说明书能够成功进行试纸条检测。从不同疟疾流行国家的公共药房收集的蒿甲醚和青蒿琥酯药物均未检测不合格。
通过未来对检测条件和灵敏度的优化，这种简单的试纸条检测有可能作为一种定性和半定量检测方法，用于在流行地区快速筛查假冒青蒿素药物。
