Challenges in Laboratory Diagnosis of Malaria in a Low-Resource Country at Tertiary Care in Eastern Nepal: A Comparative Study of Conventional vs. Molecular Methodologies.

ABSTRACT: For ongoing malaria elimination programmes, available methods such as microscopy and rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) cannot detect all malaria cases in acute febrile illness. These methods are entirely dependent on the course of infection, parasite load, and skilled technical resources. Our study objectives were to estimate the performance of light microscopy and a RDT as well as real-time PCR for the detection of the Plasmodium parasite. Altogether, 52 blood samples collected from patients with acute febrile illness were tested by microscopy, RDT, and real-time PCR. The results were compared in terms of sensitivity and specificity. Microscopy detected the malaria parasite in 5.8% of the blood samples whereas 13.5% were detected by the RDT and 27% by real-time PCR. Considering real-ti

SUBMITTER: Dahal P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8727160 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature