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Comparative Study
. 2018 Oct;56(5):447-452.
doi: 10.3347/kjp.2018.56.5.447. Epub 2018 Oct 31.

Comparative Assessment of Diagnostic Performances of Two Commercial Rapid Diagnostic Test Kits for Detection of Plasmodium spp. in Ugandan Patients with Malaria

Young Yil Bahk  1 , Seo Hye Park  2 , Woojoo Lee  3 , Kyoung Jin  4 , Seong Kyu Ahn  2 , Byoung-Kuk Na  4 , Tong-Soo Kim  3
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Comparative Assessment of Diagnostic Performances of Two Commercial Rapid Diagnostic Test Kits for Detection of Plasmodium spp. in Ugandan Patients with Malaria

Young Yil Bahk et al. Korean J Parasitol. 2018 Oct.

Abstract

Prompt diagnosis of malaria cases with rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) has been widely adopted as an effective malaria diagnostic tool in many malaria endemic countries, primarily due to their easy operation, fast result output, and straightforward interpretation. However, there has been controversy about the diagnostic accuracy of RDTs. This study was conducted to evaluate the diagnostic performances of the 2 commercially available malaria RDT kits, RapiGEN Malaria Ag Pf/Pv (pLDH/pLDH) and Asan EasyTestTM Malaria Ag Pf/Pv (HRP-2/pLDH) for their abilities to detect Plasmodium species in blood samples collected from Ugandan patients with malaria. To evaluate the diagnostic performances of these 2 RDT kits, 229 blood samples were tested for malaria infection by microscopic examination and a species-specific nested polymerase chain reaction. The detection sensitivities for P. falciparum of Malaria Ag Pf/Pv (pLDH/pLDH) and Asan EasyTestTM Malaria Ag Pf/Pv (HRP-2/pLDH) were 87.83% and 89.57%, respectively. The specificities of the 2 RDTs were 100% for P. falciparum and mixed P. falciparum/P. vivax infections. These results suggest that the 2 RDT kits showed reasonable levels of diagnostic performances for detection of the malaria parasites from Ugandan patients. However, neither kit could effectively detect P. falciparum infections with low parasitaemia (<500 parasites/μl).

Keywords: Malaria; Uganda; diagnostic performance; rapid diagnostic test.

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Conflict of interest statement

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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