Advances in Molecular Diagnosis of Malaria

Abstract

Malaria is a mosquito-borne disease caused by five species of Plasmodium parasites. Accurate diagnosis of malaria plays an essential part in malaria control. With traditional diagnostic methodologies, malaria control programs have achieved remarkable success during the past decade, and are now heading toward malaria elimination in many areas. This new situation, however, calls for novel diagnostics with improved sensitivity, throughput, and reduced cost for active screening of malaria parasites, as all transfected individuals have to be identified in order to block transmission. In this chapter, we provide a brief introduction of malaria, the requirement of diagnostic advances in the age of malaria elimination, and a comprehensive overview of the currently available molecular malaria diagnostics, ranging from well-known tests to platforms in early stages of evaluation. We also discussed several practical issues for the application of molecular tests in malaria identification.

Keywords: Active screening; Blood stage; Control and elimination; High-throughput detection; Malaria; Molecular diagnostics; PCR; Sample pooling; Surveillance and monitoring.