New device offers earlier detection of malaria

Published on Friday 24 April 2009 22:07

A DEVICE to detect malaria in less than an hour is being developed by Scottish scientists, it was announced yesterday.

The disease claims the life of a child every 30 seconds in sub- Saharan African and parts of south-east Asia, its most prevalent areas.

Since 2000, an average of 1,700 Britons have been diagnosed with the disease every year. Flu-like symptoms of malaria can be missed until the patient is critically ill.

Now a team from Glasgow University has begun developing a device to reduce the time it takes to diagnose the disease.

Blood placed on a microchip will tell doctors what type of malaria patients have and its resistance to first-line drugs used to treat the disease.

Last week, initial trials proved fruitful for the team, which is conducting the only malaria study of its kind in the UK. The malaria chip was tested for the first time with a human blood sample.

Dr Lisa Ranford-Cartwright, of the Faculty of Biomedical and Life Sciences, said: "We are greatly encouraged by the initial result. Obviously, we need to do a full programme of clinical tests, but the fact that this first test was positive is an excellent start.

"Currently, it can take anything up to 48 hours to determine whether a patient has malaria and, even then, the doctors are unable to tell whether the parasite is drug resistant.

"Our malaria chip should be able to do the process in less than 60 minutes, and we hope that by the end of the development project we will have reduced this time further."

Every year, an average of 1,700 Britons are diagnosed with the disease, which can prove fatal. It is thought the true figures are much higher as many cases are left unreported.