Malaria is causing death and despair to many people all over the world. The most vulnerable are the people in the poor regions where the living conditions are bad and where adequate medical healthcare is lacking. According to WHO approximately 219 million people were diagnosed with malaria in 2011. 660 000 died from the disease the same year and 85 percent of these were children under five. About 90 percent of all cases occurred in the sub-Saharan Africa (WHO African Region). The numbers can be higher because far from all cases are registered.
The most important for a person with malaria is to get the right treatment fast. Recently researchers at Rice University in the U.S. announced that they have developed a method that can diagnose malaria without blood tests. By using a battery powered malaria detector that sends out a laser pulse through the skin, for example the fingertip, a malaria infected patient can be diagnosed in seconds without any other further steps. The laser pulse is heating the iron in the malaria parasite, which is lacking in fresh blood. The heat produces microscopic bubbles and emits a characteristic acoustic signal which identifies with the same technique used on warships looking for enemy submarines.
This method can lead to cheap and faster surveys that do not require specially trained personnel, chemicals and expensive microscope used in blood analysis.
Very promising results opens for a clinical test in January 2014
The method has been tested on mice in which only one of a hundred million cells were infected. According to the researchers, the results are very promising when not a single healthy blood signalled a positive false alarm.
The first clinical tests where malaria infected people should be investigated by the new method will begin in late January 2014.
Image sources: New York Times Malaria Disease
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