A Biochemical Assay Provides Better Diagnosis for Malaria Infection

Abstract

Ifeanyichukwu Okeke

Malaria is a disease caused by Plasmodium parasite and it is the deadliest parasitic disease affecting humanity. Detection of this microscopic organism using currently available techniques in the face of dwindling quality of testing reagents is increasingly becoming quite challenging especially in low prevalent settings and low-density infections. The absence of a particular detection method devoid of shortcomings and pitfalls of significant order prompted the development of a simple biochemical in vitro diagnostic technique for Plasmodium infection detection known as AfinUrimal. In this study the efficacy of AfinUrimal in detecting active malaria infection using stained blood microscopy method as the reference was examined on 397 patients with febrile illness in Jos, Nigeria in the year 2022. Sensitivity/specificity of AfinUrimal method against stained blood microscopy method was 99.42/92.0% respectively. The analysis showed that biochemical detection of malaria infection using AfinUrimal provides greater sensitivity and specificity useful for diagnostic, epidemiological and research purposes.

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