Institute of Natural Materials Technology, University of Technology, Dresden, Germany.
Vector-borne Diseases Unit, PNG Institute of Medical Research, Madang, Madang Province, Papua New Guinea.
Nat Commun. 2021 Feb 12;12(1):969. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-21110-w.
Improved methods for malaria diagnosis are urgently needed. Here, we evaluate a novel method named rotating-crystal magneto-optical detection (RMOD) in 956 suspected malaria patients in Papua New Guinea. RMOD tests can be conducted within minutes and at low cost. We systematically evaluate the capability of RMOD to detect infections by directly comparing it with expert light microscopy, rapid diagnostic tests and polymerase chain reaction on capillary blood samples. We show that compared to light microscopy, RMOD exhibits 82% sensitivity and 84% specificity to detect any malaria infection and 87% sensitivity and 88% specificity to detect Plasmodium vivax. This indicates that RMOD could be useful in P. vivax dominated elimination settings. Parasite density correlates well with the quantitative magneto-optical signal. Importantly, residual hemozoin present in malaria-negative patients is also detectable by RMOD, indicating its ability to detect previous infections. This could be exploited to reveal transmission hotspots in low-transmission settings.
迫切需要改进疟疾诊断方法。在这里，我们在巴布亚新几内亚的 956 名疑似疟疾患者中评估了一种名为旋转晶体磁光检测（RMOD）的新方法。RMOD 测试可以在数分钟内以低成本进行。我们通过将 RMOD 与专家光镜检查、快速诊断测试和毛细管血样聚合酶链反应直接比较，系统地评估了 RMOD 检测感染的能力。我们表明，与光镜相比，RMOD 对检测任何疟疾感染的敏感性为 82%，特异性为 84%，对检测间日疟原虫的敏感性为 87%，特异性为 88%。这表明 RMOD 在以间日疟原虫为主的消除环境中可能有用。寄生虫密度与定量磁光信号很好地相关。重要的是，RMOD 还可以检测到疟疾阴性患者体内残留的疟原血红素，表明其能够检测以前的感染。这可用于揭示低传播环境中的传播热点。
