Exeter engineers create new technique for malaria diagnosis

April 28, 2008

Researchers from the Universities of Exeter and Coventry have developed the first new technique for diagnosing malaria able to challenge the rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) currently used in the field. Early results, now published in the Biophysical Journal, suggest that the technique could be as effective as RDTs but far faster and cheaper, making it a potentially viable alternative. The team is now working on a non-invasive version of the device, which with the assistance of a team from the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT), Department of Biomedical Research in Amsterdam, it is planning to trial in Kenya later this year.

Two years in the making and funded by the European Union, this technique uses magneto-optic technology (MOT) to detect haemozoin, a waste product of the malarial parasite, in the blood. Haemozoin crystals are weakly magnetic and have a distinct rectangular form. They also exhibit optical dichroism, which means that they absorb light more strongly along their length than across their width. When aligned by a magnetic field they behave like a weak Polaroid© sheet such as used in sunglasses. This new technology takes advantage of these properties to give a precise reading of the presence of haemozoin in a small blood sample. The team has created a device, which gives a positive or negative reading for malaria in less than a minute.

The new device has a totally different approach from RDTs, which use a chemical agent to detect antigens associated with the malarial parasite. One of the problems with RDTs is that they need to be kept within a given temperature range, which is difficult in hot climates. These disposable kits cost between $1.50 and $4.50 each and take around 15 minutes to deliver a reading.

High-power microscopy is still the best method available for malaria diagnosis and has been used for more than a century. Unfortunately it is time-consuming and requires expensive equipment and specialist medical skills, which are rarely available in villages in rural areas in malaria endemic countries. Over the last decade RDTs have been developed, which allow for faster diagnosis in the field, but these are too costly to be viable for developing countries. Furthermore, RDTs are often not stable at relatively high temperatures and sometimes remain positive even after successful treatment. In many communities where malaria is having a severe impact on health, there is no testing for malaria and young children who have a fever are given anti-malaria drugs as a matter of course. This has contributed to the malarial parasite becoming increasingly resistant to the common anti-malaria drugs. Malaria is a disease for which there is still no vaccine.

Professor Dave Newman of the University of Exeter's School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics, said: "There is an urgent need for a new diagnostic technique for malaria, particularly in the light of global warming, which threatens to spread the disease into new parts of the world, including southern Europe. The early results from our device are very promising and hugely exciting. We expect to ultimately produce a sensitive non-invasive device that will be cost effective and easy to use, making it suitable for developing countries, where the need is greatest."

University of Exeter

---

---

	End Malaria by Michael Bungay Stanier (Editor) End Malaria is more than a book, it’s a great cause. At least $20 from each copy sold by us goes directly to Malaria No More to send a mosquito net to a family in need and to support life-saving work in the fight against malaria. Malaria No More, an international advocacy organization, is on a mission to end malaria related deaths by 2015. In addition to saving lives, buying this book means you can enjoy essays by 62 of American’s favorite business authors, including Tom Peters, Nicholas Carr, Pam Slim, and Sir Ken Robinson. Organized into three main sections—Focus, Courage, Resilience—and eight subsections—Tap Your Strengths, Create Freedom, Love & Be Kind, Disrupt Normal, Take Small Steps, Embrace Systems, Get Physical, Collaborate—all essays in End...
	The Making of a Tropical Disease: A Short History of Malaria (Johns Hopkins Biographies of Disease) by Randall M. Packard (Author) Malaria sickens hundreds of millions of people—and kills one to three million—each year. Despite massive efforts to eradicate the disease, it remains a major public health problem in poorer tropical regions. But malaria has not always been concentrated in tropical areas. How did other regions control malaria and why does the disease still flourish in some parts of the globe?From Russia to Bengal to Palm Beach, Randall Packard’s far-ranging narrative traces the natural and social forces that help malaria spread and make it deadly. He finds that war, land development, crumbling health systems, and globalization—coupled with climate change and changes in the distribution and flow of water—create conditions in which malaria's carrier mosquitoes thrive. The combination of these...
	The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years by Sonia Shah (Author) In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have opened their pocketbooks in hopes of eradicating the scourge. How does a parasitic disease that we’ve known how to prevent for more than a century still infect three hundred million people every year, killing nearly one million of them? In The Fever, the journalist Sonia Shah sets out to answer this question, delivering a timely, inquisitive chronicle of the illness and its influence on human lives. The Fever captures the curiously fascinating, devastating history of this long-standing thorn in the side of humanity.
	The Imaginations of Unreasonable Men: Inspiration, Vision, and Purpose in the Quest to End Malaria by Bill Shore (Author) A small cadre of scientists—collaborators and competitors—are determined to develop a vaccine for malaria—a feat most tropical disease experts have long considered impossible. Skepticism, doubt, and a host of logistical and financial obstacles dog their quest. Success may ultimately elude them. Why, and how, do they persist? Bill Shore is a writer, philanthropist, and business leader who knows from personal experience the rare and elusive nature of transformative innovation. In this moving and inspiring book, the story of these uncompromising scientists serves as springboard for his passionate inquiry into the character and moral fabric of those who devote their lives to solving the world’s most pressing and perplexing problems. What does it take to achieve the impossible? It takes...
	Little Things Make Big Differences: A Story about Malaria by John Nunes (Author)
	The Malaria Capers : More Tales of Parasites and People, Research and Reality by Robert S. Desowitz (Author) "Reads like a murder mystery. . . . [Desowitz] writes with uncommon lucidity and verse, leaving the reader with a vivid understanding of malaria and other tropical diseases, and the ways in which culture, climate and politics have affected their spread and containment."—New York TimesWhy, Robert S. Desowitz asks, has biotechnical research on malaria produced so little when it had promised so much? An expert in tropical diseases, Desowtiz searches for answers in this provocative book.
	Quinine: Malaria and the Quest for a Cure That Changed the World by Fiammetta Rocco (Author) Quinine: The Jesuits discovered it. The Protestants feared it. The British vied with the Dutch for it, and the Nazis seized it. Because of quinine, medicine, warfare, and exploration were changed forever. For more than one thousand years, there was no cure for malaria. In 1623, after ten cardinals and hundreds of their attendants died in Rome while electing Urban VII the new pope, he announced that a cure must be found. He encouraged Jesuit priests establishing new missions in Asia and in South America to learn everything they could about how the local people treated the disease, and in 1631, an apothecarist in Peru named Agostino Salumbrino dispatched a new miracle to Rome. The cure was quinine, an alkaloid made from the bitter red bark of the cinchona tree. From the quest of the...
	Humanity's Burden: A Global History of Malaria (Studies in Environment and History) by James L.A. Webb Jr. (Author) Humanity's Burden provides a panoramic overview of the history of malaria. It traces the long arc of malaria out of tropical Africa into Eurasia, its transfer to the Americas during the early years of the Columbian exchange, and its retraction from the middle latitudes into the tropics since the late nineteenth century. Adopting a broadly comparative approach to historical patterns and processes, it synthesizes research findings from the natural and social sciences and weaves these understandings into a narrative that reaches from the earliest evidence of malaria infections in tropical Africa up to the present. Written in a style that is easily accessible to non-specialists, it considers the significance of genetic mutations, diet, lifestyle, migration, warfare, palliative and curative...
	Molecular Approaches to Malaria: by Irwin W. Sherman (Editor) "Molecular Approaches to Malaria" provides an overview of the rapid and significant developments that have occurred in malaria research, including the 2002 genome sequencing of Plasmodium falciparum and its mosquito vector, Anopheles gambiae. This work: provides a concise source of up-to-date research findings; appeals to a diverse audience, including malaria researchers, teachers, investigators, and public health professionals; offers contributions by recognized malaria researchers with practical experience; and, presents comprehensive coverage of topics including a clearly written introduction to Plasmodium molecular biology.
	Magic Bullets to Conquer Malaria: From Quinine to Qinghaosu by Irwin W. Sherman (Author) After more than four decades of working on the frontlines in the war against malaria, author Irwin W. Sherman is uniquely qualified to present this chronicle of the search for medicines to conquer malaria. The book not only reviews the history of antimalarial medicines, it also explains the hurdles that lie ahead in the discovery and development of effective treatments and control strategies. Moreover, it provides new perspectives on the creative process of drug discovery as well as the challenges of overcoming drug resistance. Magic Bullets To Conquer Malaria provides a historical overview of the medicines that have been used to treat malaria. It recounts how these drugs were discovered, how they have been used, and why they have failed to eradicate this disease. In addition,...