Mobile nucleic acid testing of asymptomatic Plasmodium infections for malaria elimination (ASYMALE)

Increased international malaria control efforts have resulted in dramatic reduction in the global malaria incidence over the past decade. In some places, the efficiency of control measures has led to the thought that elimination could be obtained; in line with the ambitious goal of achieving worldwide malaria elimination endorsed by the World Health Organization. As the global public health objectives for malaria has evolved from control towards elimination, there is an increasing interest in the significance of asymptomatic infections and the optimal diagnostic test to identify and treat them.

Current field diagnostics rely almost exclusively on microscopy and rapid diagnostic tests. While they perform sufficiently well for diagnosing patients with acute symptomatic malaria, both methods could miss significant proportions of asymptomatic parasite carriers due to their detection limit of ~50 parasites/μl. In response to the strong desire and urgent needs to develop field-deployable sensitive malaria diagnosis, a promising, highly sensitive, user-friendly and cost-effective “sample-in-answer-out” portable malaria molecular diagnostic system known as AnyMDx was recently developed. The proposed technology significantly simplifies the complex nucleic acid testing and offers low-cost and accurate diagnosis in a quick and automatic fashion, thus putting the power of a full diagnostic laboratory into the palms of healthcare workers’s hands. 

EDCTP Grants

Surveillance

Jan 2020 — Dec 2023

$556,811

Senegal