New test fast-tracks diagnosis for malaria

A new invention can cheaply and accurately diagnose malaria infection in just a few minutes using only a droplet of blood, researchers have reported in the journal Nature Medicine. The tool could replace the laborious, error-prone method by which a lab technician looks for malaria parasites in blood through a microscope, they said. While that method is considered the gold standard in malaria diagnostics today, it depends on the technician’s skill in interpreting the image, the quality of the microscope and lab chemicals, and even on the thickness of the blood smear on the slide itself. The device unveiled in Nature Medicine uses magnetic resonance relaxometry (MRR), a cousin of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the technology that powers today’s advanced medical scanners. It measures the crystals metabolised by the Plasmodium parasite after the creature—which is transmitted to humans in mosquito bites—feasts on nutrient-rich haemoglobin in the blood.

This system can be built at a very low cost, relative to the million-dollar MRI machines used in a hospital.

Weng Kung Peng, a research scientist at SMART

The touted replacement is an “inexpensive” desktop mini-lab that, according to its inventors, can detect fewer than 10 malaria parasites per microlitre of blood, using a sample of less than 10 microlitres—equivalent to a small drop from a finger prick. The whole procedure just takes a few minutes, the inventors said. While malaria is both preventable and treatable, it killed an estimated 627,000 people in 2012, mainly children in Africa, according to the World Health Organisation. That year there was also an estimated 207 million cases worldwide, and the WHO says current funding levels are “far below” what is needed to eradicate the disease.

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