Evaluating the dual reactivity on SD bioline malaria rapid diagnosis tests as a potential indicator of high parasitemia due to Plasmodium falciparum

ABSTRACT

The co-reactivity of the Plasmodium histidine-rich protein 2 (HRP2) and lactate dehydrogenase (pLDH) in malaria rapid diagnosis tests (mRDTs) as a potential indicator of high parasitemia linked to Plasmodium falciparum was evaluated in the reported study from Cameroon. The samples were screened for malaria using both mRDTs (SD bioline HRP2/pLDH), light microscopy and further confirmed by Plasmodium species-specific PCR assay. Of the 483 patients enrolled, 161 (33.3%) showed a reactive mRDTs amongst which 70 patients were positive by both microscopy and mRDTs with 30.0% (21/70) positive for HRP2 alone, while 70.0% (49/70) showed a dual reaction to HRP2 and pLDH parasite antigens. P. falciparum parasitemia was found to be significantly high among patients with both reactive antigens, (p < 0.0001) suggesting that mRDTs reactivity is influenced by parasite load which could be used as a diagnostic marker for therapeutic management of patients with high parasitemia in field conditions.

KEYWORDS:

• Plasmodium falciparum
• malaria
• SD bioline mRDTs
• antigens- HRP2/pLDH

Acknowledgments

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors. We thank all the patients who agreed to participate in this study. We also thank the Cameroon Malaria Control Program (PNLP) for assisting in the acquisition of mRDTs. Roman Rodrigue Dongang Nana, is very grateful to Indian DBT-TWAS postdoctoral program, which made it possible to carry out part of this work through its postdoctoral fellowship program.

Author’s contributors

RRDN, VM, RMS and VS conceived and designed the study, RRDN, VM, NLN and NAA collected field data of the study, RRDN and NLN performed the experiments and samples preparation, VS supervised molecular experiments, RRDN and VS analyzed data, RRDN wrote the first draft of the manuscript, RRDN, VM, NLN, NAA, RMS and VS revised the manuscript. All authors have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

All data included in this study are fully available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the NA [0].