Abstract

BackgroundUndesirable consequences of donor Plasmodium falciparum parasitaemia on stored donor blood have been reported. Therefore, it is imperative that all prospective blood donors are screened for P. falciparum infections using sensitive techniques. In this study, the sensitivities of microscopy, rapid diagnostic test (RDT), loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) assay and selective whole genome amplification (sWGA) technique in detecting P. falciparum infections in blood donors was assessed.MethodsRandomly selected blood donors from 5 districts in Greater Accra Region of Ghana were screened for asymptomatic P. falciparum infections. Each donor sample was screened with SD Bioline RDT kit for P. falciparum histidine rich protein 2 and Plasmodium lactate dehydrogenase antigens, sWGA and 18s-rRNA LAMP. Crude DNA LAMP (crDNA-LAMP) was compared to purified DNA LAMP (pDNA-LAMP).ResultsA total of 771 blood donors were screened. The respective overall prevalence of P. falciparum in Ghana by microscopy, RDT, crDNA-LAMP, pDNA-LAMP and sWGA was 7.4%, 11.8%, 16.9%, 17.5% and 18.0%. Using sWGA as the reference test, the sensitivities of microscopy, RDT, crDNA-LAMP and pDNA-LAMP were 41.0% (95% CI 32.7–49.7), 65.5% (95% CI 56.9–73.3), 82.6% (95% CI 75.8–88.3) and 95.7% (95% CI 90.1–98.4), respectively. There was near perfect agreement between LAMP and sWGA (sWGA vs. crDNA-LAMP, κ = 0.87; sWGA vs. pDNA-LAMP, κ = 0.96), while crDNA-LAMP and pDNA-LAMP agreed perfectly (κ = 0.91). Goodness of fit test indicated non-significant difference between the performance of LAMP and sWGA (crDNA-LAMP vs. sWGA: x2 = 0.71, p = 0.399 and pDNA-LAMP vs. sWGA: x2 = 0.14, p = 0.707). Finally, compared to sWGA, the performance of LAMP did not differ in detecting sub-microscopic parasitaemia (sWGA vs. crDNA-LAMP: x2 = 1.12, p = 0.290 and sWGA vs. pDNA-LAMP: x2 = 0.22, p = 0.638).ConclusionsLAMP assay agreed near perfectly with sWGA with non-significant differences in their ability to detect asymptomatic P. falciparum parasitaemia in blood donors. Therefore, it is recommended that LAMP based assays are employed to detect P. falciparum infections in blood donors due to its high sensitivity, simplicity, cost-effectiveness and user-friendliness.

Highlights

  • Undesirable consequences of donor Plasmodium falciparum parasitaemia on stored donor blood have been reported

  • Due to the negative changes impacted to all haematological cell lines and the accumulation of harmful products, it is imperative that all prospective blood donors are screened for malaria parasites to exclude infected donor blood from clinical use

  • Considering the merits of loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) and Selective whole genome amplification (sWGA), this study explored these two nucleic acid amplification techniques together with microscopy and rapid diagnostic test (RDT) in detecting asymptomatic falciparum parasitaemia in blood donors

Read more

Summary

Introduction

Undesirable consequences of donor Plasmodium falciparum parasitaemia on stored donor blood have been reported. It is imperative that all prospective blood donors are screened for P. falciparum infections using sensitive techniques. In Ghana, the prevalence of asymptomatic Plasmodium falciparum infections is shown to be high among persons over 20-year-old [1] and prospective blood donors [2]. In other parts of Africa, high prevalence of asymptomatic P. falciparum parasitaemia in blood donors has been reported [3,4,5,6]. Due to the negative changes impacted to all haematological cell lines and the accumulation of harmful products, it is imperative that all prospective blood donors are screened for malaria parasites to exclude infected donor blood from clinical use. To be able to detect low parasitaemia associated with asymptomatic infections, a sensitive diagnostic technique that is easy to adopt and amenable to blood banks in malaria endemic zones is essential in this regard

Methods
Results
Discussion
Conclusion
Full Text
Published version (Free)

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call