Abstract
Despite being preventable and treatable, malaria still puts almost half of the world’s population at risk. Thus, prompt, accurate and sensitive malaria diagnosis is crucial for disease control and elimination. Optical microscopy and immuno-rapid tests are the standard malaria diagnostic methods in the field. However, these are time-consuming and fail to detect low-level parasitemia. Biosensors and lab-on-a-chip devices, as reported to different applications, usually offer high sensitivity, specificity, and ease of use at the point of care. Thus, these can be explored as an alternative for malaria diagnosis. Alongside malaria infection inside the human red blood cells, parasites consume host hemoglobin generating the hemozoin crystal as a by-product. Hemozoin is produced in all parasite species either in symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. Furthermore, hemozoin crystals are produced as the parasites invade the red blood cells and their content relates to disease progression. Hemozoin is, therefore, a unique indicator of infection, being used as a malaria biomarker. Herein, the so-far developed biosensors and lab-on-a-chip devices aiming for malaria detection by targeting hemozoin as a biomarker are reviewed and discussed to fulfil all the medical demands for malaria management towards elimination.
Highlights
Malaria, which is transmitted by the bite of female Anopheles mosquitoes infected withPlasmodium parasites, is one of the most life-threatening infectious diseases worldwide, with a significant impact on human lives
RDTs, which work on the principle of the detection of specific antigens produced by the malaria parasite, are portable and easy to use at the community level, reaching more patients
Given glucose levels in the and hascontributed greatly contributed to diabetes management. This technology has been to other diseases, including ma-malaria, which its success, this technology has widespread been widespread to other diseases, including laria, which isisthe of this thismanuscript
Summary
Malaria, which is transmitted by the bite of female Anopheles mosquitoes infected with. RDTs, which work on the principle of the detection of specific antigens produced by the malaria parasite, are portable and easy to use at the community level, reaching more patients These do not allow parasitemia quantification nor present a better limit of detection than microscopy, achieving only 100–200 parasites/μL of blood [9]. To date, none fulfil all the critical requirements regarding detection limits, sensitivity, specificity, portability, low cost, ease of use and, ideally, non-invasiveness [11,12,13,14] This short literature review focuses on the most recent developments in biosensors and lab-on-a-chip devices for malaria detection, on those using hemozoin as a biomarker. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there is no such review in literature discussing this topic, and, it is expected that this review can bridge the gap
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