Using magnetic fields, this technique can detect parasite's waste products in infected blood cells.
Over the past several decades, malaria diagnosis has changed very little. After taking a blood sample from a patient, a technician smears the blood across a glass slide, stains it with a special dye, and looks under a microscope for the Plasmodium parasite, which causes the disease. This approach gives an accurate count of how many parasites are in the blood — an important measure of disease severity — but is not ideal because there is potential for human error.
A research team from the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) ( http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/new-method-diagnose-malaria-0831 ) has now come up with a possible alternative. The researchers have devised a way to use magnetic resonance relaxometry (MRR), a close cousin of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), to detect a parasitic waste product in the blood of infected patients. This technique could offer a more reliable way to detect malaria, says Jongyoon Han, a professor of electrical engineering and biological engineering at MIT.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-08/miot-anw082914.php
(Score: 4, Informative) by tribaal on Tuesday September 02 2014, @03:19PM
This looks like great news, but I'd like to stress that while putting blood samples under a microscope is still the official canonical way to diagnose malaria, some much faster field tests exist that look for a specific parasite antigen (this is an example (pdf) [tulipgroup.com])
The usual procedure here is to test for antigens, and only involve technicians in very specific cases (the linked brochure claims 99% accuracy - albeit only for the most common species of parasite).
(source: I live in Tanzania)
(Score: 1) by GmanTerry on Sunday September 07 2014, @07:18AM
When I was in the Peace Corps in West Africa I contracted Malaria several times. The last time was really bad. I didn't start showing symptoms until the day after I arrived in Phoenix. I went to the hospital and spent 10 hours waiting while they tried to find some one who could stain the slide and detect the virus. I offered to do it as I was the Peace Corps Doctor's lab tech for several months and I did it frequently. They wouldn't allow the patient to do it. It was like the Doctor thought Quinine was a Schedule 2 narcotic or something. When they finally verified that it was Malaria as I said, the nearest Quinine was at a VA hospital in Tuscon. Another four hour wait. The U.S. is not equipped to deal with tropical diseases. Just watch the chaos when Ebola starts popping up.
By the way, the reason we Americans contracted Malaria and the Europeans didn't was because of the medicine we took. We took Aralin once a week on Sunday. The Europeans took their drug daily. In West Africa stomach and intestinal distress caused by ingesting ice cubes, water or unwashed food was a weekly occurrence. If it happened on Sunday it might well flush (no pun intended) the Aralin out of your system leaving you unprotected several days later. That's why we got Malaria more frequently that our European brothers.
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
(Score: 1) by tribaal on Monday September 08 2014, @02:12PM
That's not surprising unfortunately, Western hospitals are mostly oblivious to tropical diseases. I can't really blame them - malaria in the US is pretty rare, it's not like they are used to it.
Annecdata: One of the British volunteers I know started having symptoms of malaria while back at home in England for vacation, and it took so long to get diagnosed and prescribed that he decided to hop on a plane back to Tanzania instead - and got diagnosed and treated within hours instead.
(Score: 2) by carguy on Tuesday September 02 2014, @08:55PM
Nothing to say, just wanted to thank the submitter for this interesting article.