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Review
. 2021 Jun 17:11:681063.
doi: 10.3389/fcimb.2021.681063. eCollection 2021.

Diagnostic Methods for Non-Falciparum Malaria

Alba Marina Gimenez  1 , Rodolfo F Marques  2 , Matías Regiart  3 , Daniel Youssef Bargieri  1
Affiliations
Review

Diagnostic Methods for Non-Falciparum Malaria

Alba Marina Gimenez et al. Front Cell Infect Microbiol. .

Abstract

Malaria is a serious public health problem that affects mostly the poorest countries in the world, killing more than 400,000 people per year, mainly children under 5 years old. Among the control and prevention strategies, the differential diagnosis of the Plasmodium-infecting species is an important factor for selecting a treatment and, consequently, for preventing the spread of the disease. One of the main difficulties for the detection of a specific Plasmodium sp is that most of the existing methods for malaria diagnosis focus on detecting P. falciparum. Thus, in many cases, the diagnostic methods neglect the other non-falciparum species and underestimate their prevalence and severity. Traditional methods for diagnosing malaria may present low specificity or sensitivity to non-falciparum spp. Therefore, there is high demand for new alternative methods able to differentiate Plasmodium species in a faster, cheaper and easier manner to execute. This review details the classical procedures and new perspectives of diagnostic methods for malaria non-falciparum differential detection and the possibilities of their application in different circumstances.

Keywords: Plasmodium sp; PoC (point of care); differential diagnosis; malaria control and elimination; non-falciparum malaria.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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