Malaria: diagnosis tested WITHOUT blood tests
A rapid, needle-free malaria detection tool, developed by a team led by the University of Queensland, could help save hundreds of thousands of lives a year.
Malaria is usually detected through a blood test, but scientists have devised a method that uses a device that shines a beam of harmless infrared light at a person's ear or finger for five to ten seconds, collecting a signature a infrared which is processed by a computer algorithm. So the diagnosis of malaria will take place in seconds and, above all, without the use of needles.
The team's international lead, Dr Maggy Lord of UQ's School of Biological Sciences , said the technology would revolutionize the way malaria is fought globally.
“It is currently incredibly difficult to test large groups of people, such as the population of a village or city – you have to take everyone's blood and mix it with a reagent to get a result,” said Dr Lord. "But with this tool we can find out very quickly whether an entire village or town is affected by or carrying malaria."
The technique is chemical- and needle-free and detects malaria through the skin using infrared light – just a flash on a person's skin and that's it." “The device works with a smartphone, so the results are captured in real time.”
The researchers believe that this technology is the first step towards the elimination of malaria, q thanks to a very rapid diagnosis that will allow a.
“According to the World Health Organization's malaria report, there were an estimated 241 million cases worldwide in 2020 and more than 600,000 died from malaria, with most cases occurring in the 'sub-Saharan Africa, where 90 per cent of deaths are in children under five,' said Dr Lord.
“The biggest challenge in eliminating the disease is the presence of asymptomatic people in a population who serve as a reservoir for mosquito transmission.” "The World Health Organization has proposed large-scale surveillance in endemic areas, and this noninvasive, inexpensive, and rapid tool offers a way to achieve this."
The technology could also help tackle other diseases.
“We have successfully used this technology on mosquitoes to non-invasively detect infections such as malaria, Zika and dengue,” said Dr Lord.
In our post-COVID world, this technology could be used to better address disease as people move around the world."
Non-invasive diagnosis would be a great step forward for medicine in general, also because it would allow for early intervention in the spread of endemic and extremely dangerous diseases.
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The article Malaria: diagnosis tested WITHOUT blood tests comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/malaria-sperimentata-la-diagnosi-senza-esami-del-sangue/ on Mon, 12 Dec 2022 12:50:59 +0000.