Krampa Francis D, Aniweh Yaw, Awandare Gordon A, Kanyong Prosper
West African Centre for Cell Biology of Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP), University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana.
Department of Biochemistry, Cell & Molecular Biology, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana.
Diagnostics (Basel). 2017 Sep 19;7(3):54. doi: 10.3390/diagnostics7030054.
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.
疟疾对全球健康的影响不断促使人们需要制定有效的诊断策略。在疟疾流行地区，实验室面临的技术和基础设施挑战阻碍了常规诊断。这些实验室缺乏标准设施、专业知识或诊断用品；因此，治疗是基于临床诊断或自我诊断进行的。由于药物成本不断增加以及耐药菌株的出现和传播，准确诊断疟疾很有必要。然而，广泛使用的用于疟疾诊断的吉姆萨染色显微镜检查和免疫层析试验存在若干缺点，包括灵敏度不足和假阳性结果。性能有所改进的替代方法要么成本高昂，周转时间较长，要么需要一定水平的专业知识，这使得它们不适用于即时检测（POC）应用。这些差距使得有必要探索更高效的检测技术，尤其是在资源有限的环境中具有即时检测应用潜力的技术。本综述讨论了一些旨在改善疟疾临床诊断的最新趋势和新方法。
