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http://hdl.handle.net/2445/105108
Title: | Rapid diagnostic tests for malaria: past, present and future |
Author: | Valle Delgado, Juan José Fernàndez Busquets, Xavier |
Keywords: | Malària Diagnòstic Malaria Diagnosis |
Issue Date: | 18-Oct-2016 |
Publisher: | Future Medicine |
Abstract: | Prompt and accurate diagnosis of malaria is part of an effective disease management (1) , because if not treated malaria can quickly become life-threatening, whereas false positives increase treatment costs and drug-induced resistance, giving a wrong idea of therapeutic efficacy. Since the symptoms of malaria are nonspecific, the observation of clinical features alone might not be enough and should be confirmed with a parasitological analysis. Microscopic examination of Giemsa-stained thin and/or thick blood smears remains the conventional approach for diagnosis (2). The sensitivity of this relatively inexpensive method is excellent, allowing the detection of as few as 5 parasites per µL of blood, and permitting also the determination of the infecting species and of the developmental stage of circulating parasites. In addition, smears provide a permanent record for quality assessment of the diagnosis. However, microscopy requires considerable expertise learned through extended training, the procedure is labor-intensive and time-consuming, and the variability in stains and in techniques used to collect and process blood affects slide interpretation (3). Finally, routine clinical microscopy cannot reliably detect very low parasitemias (<5 parasites/µL) or sequestered parasites, and mixed infections are often missed, especially when Plasmodium malariae and Plasmodium ovale are present, as their densities are often low relative to Plasmodium falciparum ( |
Note: | Versió postprint del document publicat a: http://dx.doi.org/10.2217/fmb-2016-0139 |
It is part of: | Future Microbiology, 2016, vol. 11, num. 11, p. 1379-1382 |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2445/105108 |
Related resource: | http://dx.doi.org/10.2217/fmb-2016-0139 |
ISSN: | 1746-0913 |
Appears in Collections: | Articles publicats en revistes (ISGlobal) |
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File | Description | Size | Format | |
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valle-delgado2016_2281.pdf | 126.88 kB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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